Probabilistic design fires for passenger vehicle scenarios

• Published in: Fire safety journal Vol. 120; p. 103039
• Main Authors: Mohd Tohir, Mohd Zahirasri, Spearpoint, Michael, Fleischmann, Charles
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lausanne Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2021; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Building design; Burning; Burning rate; Car parking building; Curb weight; Design fire; Fire protection; Fire safety; Fires; Functions (mathematics); Heat release rate; Heat transfer; Mathematical analysis; Mathematical functions; Passenger vehicles; Passengers; Probability; Safety engineering; Vehicles; Passenger vehicles; Probability; Heat release rate; Design fire; Car parking building
• ISSN: 0379-7112; 1873-7226
• DOI: 10.1016/j.firesaf.2020.103039

When considering fire safety design scenarios for car parking buildings it is possible that there will be spread of fire between multiple vehicles. Such scenarios need to account for the likely rate of heat release curve from already burning vehicles as this will impact on the likelihood that other vehicles will ignite and so increase the severity of the fire. Currently design fires for a single passenger vehicle are often either given as a specified rate of heat release history or as mathematical functions with fixed coefficients irrespective of the size (curb weight) of the vehicle. In this paper, experimental results taken from the literature are used to determine a probabilistic approach to characterise a single passenger vehicle design fire. It is found that a peak fire growth function and an exponential fire decay function gives an appropriate combination in which the parameters for the two functions can be determined from distribution statistics.