- Author
-
Welch, S.
- Title
- Development and Validation of a Comprehensive Model for Flame Spread and Toxic Products in Full-Scale Scenarios. (Abstract/Presentation)
- Coporate
- Building Research Establishment, Garston, England
- Report
-
NIST SP 998,
May 2003,
- Book or Conf
- Extended Abstracts and Presentations from the Workshop on Fire Growth and Spread on Objects, March 4-6, 2002, National Institute of Standards and Technology,
Peacock, R. D.; Pitts, W. M., Editors,
2003
- Keywords
-
fire growth
|
fire spread
|
scenarios
|
validation
|
toxic products
|
flame spread
- Abstract
- Fire hazard calculations require methodologies for prediction of fire growth and flame spread over realistic building materials in full-scale scenarios. If available, a general model capable of estimating the "time-to-flashover" would provide a useful vehicle for evaluation of different methods for reducing the propensity for transition to flashover, thus contributing to development of improved fire safety design. For this purpose, theoretical treatments which are entirely fundamentally-based are precluded due to computational limitations and recourse must be made to some degree of empiricism. Considering the complex range of interrelated phenomena contributing to the overall fire growth and spread, if quantitative accuracy and computational tractability are to be achieved for full-scale applications, care is needed to ensure an appropriate balance between the level of sophistication in the various component sub-models, and between 'empiricism' and 'fundamentals'. This abstract presents an assessment of these issues in the context of a model validation exercise on a series of full-scale tests on real building materials.