Influence of surrounding boundaries on fire compartment temperature

Abstract

This paper shows and demonstrates how an analysis of the energy and mass balance of a fully developed (ventilation controlled) compartment fire can be used as a basis for simple and accurate predictions of fire temperatures. The model has been applied on compartments of light weight concrete structures. A finite element FE analysis has been used to solve the heat transfer equation. Effects of moisture were considered for material properties of the surrounding structure. The results were validated with experiments. The model then accurately predicted the fire temperatures and among other things it showed the influence of moisture in the surrounding structure on the fire temperature. Parametric temperature curves according to EN 1991-1-2, 2002 were shown to overestimate the fire temperature.