- Author
- Grosshandler, W. L.
- Title
- Research Agenda for the Next Generation of Performance-Based Design Tools.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
- Volume 2
- Book or Conf
- Interflam 2007. (Interflam '07). International Interflam Conference, 11th Proceedings. Volume 2. September 3-5, 2007, London, England, 1219-1230 p., 2007
- Keywords
- fire safety | safety engineering | building codes | fire codes | regulations | design applications | fire protection | fire growth | combustion products | risk analysis | building design | occupants | fire research | computational fluid dynamics
- Identifiers
- understanding of materials that are homogeneous and well-behaved; understanding of the fire behavior of finished products that contain multiple materials and irregular geometry; human dynamics; Available Safe Egress Time (ASET); Required Safe Egress Time (RSET); Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ); role of analytical and computational tools in fire research; conceptual view of interaction of dynamic processes; variability in sequential analyses due to imperfect information; areas for enhancement of PBD capabilities and priorities set by FORUM members; benchmark fire experiments and simulations; data and experimental facilities for unraveling relationships within fire models
- Abstract
- Performance-based design (PBD) is practiced in many parts of the world today, and our current tools and level of understanding are adequate to support certain classes of fire safety designs; however, other significant applications exist that exceed the capabilities of these tools. Representatives from the FORUM* and invited technical experts attended a workshop to develop a vision for the next generation of performance-based design tools. Five areas were identified at the top of the list of research priorities to support this vision: (*) improvement of our ability to predict the impact of active fire protection systems on fire growth and fate of combustion products; (*) estimation of uncertainty and the means to incorporate it into hazard and risk analyses; (*) the relationship between aspects of the building design and the safety of building occupants; (*) the impact of material and geometry changes on fire growth and the fate of combustion products; (*) the prediction of the response of a structure to full building burn-out. A summary of the workshop that led to these research priorities are contained in this paper.