TABLE OF CONTENTS Vytenis Babrauskas
Dr. Vytenis Babrauskas is the president of Fire Science and Technology, Inc., Issaquah, Washington, a company specializing in fire safety research, fire testing issues, and fire science applications to fire investigations and litigations.
Calculations of fire behavior in buildings are not possible unless the heat release rate of the fire is known. This chapter on heat release rates provides both theoretical and empirical information. The chapter is organized so that theory and basic effects are considered first, then a compendium of product data is provided, which is arranged in alphabetic order.
The essential characteristic that describes quantitatively "How big is the fire?" is the heat release rate (HRR). This is so important that it has been described as the single most important variable in fire hazard. [1] The heat release rate of a burning item is measured in kilowatts (kW). It is the rate at which the combustion reactions produce heat. The term burning rate is also often found. This is a less specific term and it may denote either the HRR or the mass loss rate. The latter is measured in units of kg s 1. It is best to reserve the term burning rate for nonquantitative fire descriptions and to use either HRR or mass loss rate, as appropriate. The relationship of these two quantities can be expressed as
| HRR = D h c MLR | (1) |
where h c is the effective heat of combustion (MJ
