Performance-based building fire regulations are being introduced around the world. Risk to life and property is used as a performance basis for the most major departures from traditional regulations. A model has been developed for estimating the time dependent probability of failure of wood-framed walls in standard and real fires. The model is fundamentally based and uses Monte Carlo analysis. Estimates of statistical characteristics of input variables have been obtained. Application of the model has shown that thermal properties of materials in woodframed walls vary little. The coefficient of variation determined for a wall with realistic loads and variations of mechanical properties in standard and real fires was approximately 0.12.
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