Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Models have been used to measure both the temperatures reached and the duration of fires in compartments of different sizes with various fire loads and amounts of ventilation. The course of the fire may be divided into three comparatively well-defined periods. An initial period where the fire spreads after ignition to involve the entire compartment, a period of steady development, and a period of decay these last two both increasing in duration with increasing fire load and decreasing ventilation. The estimated mean rate of burning in the development period was independent of fire load and depended only on the quantity of air entering the compartment; in general, the maximum temperatures reached increased with this induced air flow and were largely independent of fire load.