Close inspection of real fires in large, open compartments reveals that they do not burn simultaneously throughout the whole compartment. Instead, these fires tend to move as flames spread, partitions or false ceilings break, and ventilation changes through glazing failure. These fires have been labelled ‘travelling fires’ and represent a new understanding of fire behaviour in modern building layouts. Despite these observations, fire scenarios currently used for the structural fire design of modern buildings are based on traditional methods that come from the extrapolation of existing fire test data. Most of this data stems from tests per formed in small compartments that are almost cubic in nature and are not valid in principle for large enclosures. The newly developed methodology presented here based on the concept of travelling fires will assist with structural fire analysis.

Article in the Nov 2009 issue on fire dynamics of the magazine Fire Risk Management.