Statistical Distribution of Heat Release Rate Data for Single Household Items.

Fire related to household items poses a threat to life safety and residential property. In this study, the fire characteristics of single household items are established as a fundamental of risk assessment for performance-based design. Information on peak heat release rate, time to peak heat release rate and total heat released are collected from full-scale fire experiments in the literature. The household items are individually classified by their dimension: Television, Chair, Table, Armchair, Cabinet and Bed for statistical and probability distribution analyses. The analysis generally exhibits an increasing trend in the fire characteristics against the item dimension increment. A linear fit with a strong correlation value is achieved for the peak heat release rate and total heat released, while a weak correlation is observed to linearly fit the time to peak heat release rate. The ranked order of fitting statistics suggests Gamma, Log-Normal and Logistic distribution as the best-fit distribution respectively for the peak heat release rate, time to peak heat release rate and total heat released. The distribution parameters are provided and can be used for probabilistic fire assessment related to household items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]