- Author
-
Bwalya, A. C.
|
Benichou, N.
|
Sultan, M. A.
- Title
- Literature Review on Design Fires.
- Coporate
- National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
- Report
-
Research Report 137; IRC-RR-137,
June 25, 2003,
31 p.
- Distribution
- FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: National Research Council of Canada, Institute for Research in Construction, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0R6, Telephone (613) 993-2607, Fax: (613) 952-7673, Email: Irc.Client-Services@nrc.ca Website: http://www.nrc.ca/irc/ircpubs [FULL DOCUMENT IN PDF]: _ http://irc.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/fulltext/rr-137/
- Keywords
-
simulators
|
room fires
|
flashover
|
combustion
|
fire tests
|
ventilation
|
heat release rate
|
fire load
|
fire models
|
mathematical models
|
zone models
|
field models
|
scenarios
|
fire statistics
|
tenability limits
- Abstract
- This literature review was carried out to establish the state-of-the-state in the area of design fires and identify future research requirements. The work was necessitated by the need to define simulated fires (design fires) and an experimental set-up for evaluating the fire performance of Canadian houses. The main parameters affecting fire development in small rooms are identified, together with the commonly-employed methods for characterizing design fires for pre-flashover and post-flashover stages of fire development. The majority of methods employed in characterizing post-flashover design fires were found to be based on parametric equations, which attempt to correlate experimental data from various sources, whereas t-squared fires are the most widely used design fires for the pre-flashover stage. Numerous combustion data, from fire tests involving real and mock-up furniture, from various laboratories around the world, was found in the literature. However, it is not possible to collate the data in a neat and organized fashion due to the extremely large variations in furniture designs and materials. Similarly, many fire load surveys have been published over the last two decades and a large variation in fire loads was found, mainly due to geographical differences and the subjective manner in which fire loads are quantified. Most importantly, the literature review revealed an absence of fire load data for residential and commercial occupancies in Canada.