Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The aim, in designing any test is to be able to examine a particular property of a material under conditions representative of those in practice. It is also desirable that the tests should be simple to carry out. Sometimes our understanding of the problem is such that the testing can be reduced to simple laboratory procedure, as for example, in the test for combustibility of materials. On the other hand, tests on structures are costly, involving large-scale elements to obtain information on their performance under fire conditions, as at present it is not possible to interpret the fire behaviour of structures in terms of the physical properties of the materials used in their construction. It is hoped that present work on the examination of the properties of materials at high temperatures will ultimately enable structures to be designed for fire conditions, thus reducing the need for such costly tests, but there is no immediate prospect of this being achieved.