A new curve for temperature-time relationship in compartment fire

Abstract

An idealized temperature curve of compartment fire has three, distinct phases: growth phase, steady-burning (or fully developed) phase, and decay phase. Standard temperature-time curves are not suitable for describing the fire phenomena because it does not take into account fire load nor ventilation conditions, and fire according to these curves never decays. The temperature curve of compartment fire, especially the growth phase, may be treated like pulse phenomena. This means that it is possible to approximate the fire development with some suitable function that satisfactory describes the pulse phenomena. The shape of the time-temperature curve for fire with flashover has characteristic peak before the decay phase, or slow decreases before the decay phase - in absence of flashover. In this paper we propose the definition of the time-temperature curve by means of a unique function in which the quantities of fuel and ventilation conditions are defined with parameters. This function is very convenient for approximation of the development of compartment fire with flashover, for smouldering combustion which has fire curve without characteristic peak, this function can be used only for approximation of growth period of fire.