- Author
- Emmons, H. W.
- Title
- Science of Fire: The New Fire Safety Engineering.
- Coporate
- Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA
- Sponsor
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
- Home Fire Proj. Tech. Rpt. 68, October 1984, 9 p.
- Keywords
- fire safety | fire codes | ignition | fire plumes | heat transfer | fire prediction
- Abstract
- Fire safety engineering is now largely a matter of experience. Experience aided by various fire tests has been organized as fire codes. Fire codes have been adopted by most governments as part of the building codes. Present fire codes are specification codes not performance codes. They specify such things as width of stairways, the flammability test result required for the use of various materials, etc. In other engineering fields, structural safety, for example, the building codes specify performance (required safe floor load) not a design specification (some required beam size). This is possible because structural engineering has a well-established scientific base. Such a scientific understanding must be established for fire engineering, before an effective performance code can be established.