Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The spread of smoke and fire in enclosed shopping malls is being studied at the Fire Research Station in full scale and model scale investigations, to obtain information from which standards of safety may be established for the occupants of shopping malls. As part of this work measurements have been made of the speed of smoke movement from a simulated fire along a model scale mall 0.56 m wide and 0.46 m high, at several combinations of fire intensity and mall length. The equipment and general procedures are described, the numerical results are presented, and comment is made on the experimental technique. Smoke speeds were in the range 0; 1 to 0.6 m/s; it can be sliown that these accord with speeds observed in field tests in a railway tunnel, though this and other detailed analysis of the results are reserved for a later report.