Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The current method of assigning the maximum heat detector spacing based on fire tests comparing the detector responses to that of a sprinkler does not produce clear performance criteria for the tested detectors. The wide variations of the maximum spacing assigned for the same type of detectors among testing laboratories, which is another strong indication of the lack of principle behind the concept developed for the testing method, simply add more confusion. Instead, it is proposed in this paper that the maximum detector spacing should be determined based on a specific mission that is expected to be accomplished by using detectors. An example introduced in this work shows: (1) how that can be accomplished, and (2) how the spacing determined here makes a lot more engineering sense than that determined by the current method.