TABLE OF CONTENTS This section provides information to assist in quantifying building characteristics, occupant characteristics, and design fire curves, which are used to characterize design fire scenarios, and it also provides information that might be necessary for developing possible fire scenarios.
The significant aspects of the design fire scenarios should be quantified. Often, neither the resources nor the data, such as ignition energy or heat release rate for each fuel package, are available to quantify every aspect of a design fire scenario. In these cases, the detailed analysis and quantification should be limited to the most significant aspects, which might include a range of different fire types (including smoldering fires), fire growth rates, or compartment ventilation rates. [2]
A design fire scenario that is highly improbable and too conservative can lead to an uneconomic building design, which might cause the building not to be built or be functional. On the other hand, a design fire scenario developed using a nonconservative approach (e.g., a long incipient phase or a slow rate of fire growth) could lead to a building design with an unacceptably high risk to occupants.
Design fire scenarios are not a description of how the majority of real fires in the building might behave. They are used to develop and test a trial design for robustness and. therefore, should present a conservative approach for analysis and determination of required fire safety measures.
Because design fire scenarios represent important input into any fire safety...
