Design Fires for Fire Safety Engineering

For construction design fire safety is one of the key requirements. Fire loads, which define the possible fires that can occur, need to be known both in magnitude and quality. This report describes design fires appropriate for use in Fire Safety Engineering (FSE) design in general and thus applicable also for building with wood, of which some specifics are described. In the approach used the initial fires are quantified using heat release rates which are dependent on the usage of the building. Assessment of fire growth and spread is based on the capability of the FDS fire simulator to make conservative estimations how rapidly and to how large a fire may grow within a given space.