Journal of Fire Protection Engineering

The twentieth century was a time of great change and growth in society as well as in fire safety. As we begin a new century, it is important to reflect on these changes, as well as the fire safety challenges in the future.

These challenges go beyond the day to day work of fire protection engineers. This paper reviews challenges that exist in the areas of fire prevention, firefighter safety, and fire protection.

The overriding fire safety challenge we face is to focus on reducing the cost of fire to our society. This will require national and international leadership, focus, resources, and motivation. The key to our future success is research: policy, scientific, and field research. Through these efforts, we can come to understand the fire problem, what fire safety efforts and measures are effective, and how these effective measures can be implemented to reduce the cost of fire in our society.

This paper is based on Dr. Beyler’s 2000 Guise Medal Lecture.

The progress on the research and application of water mist technology in fire suppression has been substantial over the last decade. This paper, following our previous review on water mist fundamental studies, reviews recent water mist applications for: the extinguishment of Class B spray and pool fires in machinery spaces, gas turbine enclosures, combat vehicles, and flammable liquid storage rooms; the extinguishment of ClassA fires in residential occupancies, marine accommodations and public spaces, heritage buildings and libraries; the extinguishment of Class C fires in electronic equipment and computer rooms; and the protection of aircraft onboard cabin and cargo compartments. Some new applications, such as the use of water mist for the extinguishment of Class K fires in commercial cooking areas; and the use of water mist as a possible total-ship protection method, as well as the use of water mist for the protection of heavy goods vehicle shuttle trains, are also reviewed. Up-to-date development of corresponding test and design criteria for the installation of water mist fire protection systems and for the evaluation of the capabilities and limitations of watermist for fire suppression in some application areas, such as machinery spaces, ship’s cabins and corridors, and turbine enclosures, are discussed.

The zone model CFAST was used to make predictions of single room preflashover fire tests conducted in a steel enclosure. These results were then compared with previously published measurements obtained in fire tests. Tests included diesel pool fires, polyurethane slab fires, and wood crib fires. Half of these tests used natural ventilation (window, 1/4 door, and full door) while the remaining tests used forced ventilation (0.25 m3/s, 0.38 m3/s, and 0.61 m3/s). With the exception of heat release rates, all CFAST inputs were selected without knowledge of the experimental results. Key variables compared include the upper layer temperature, the hot layer interface location, and ceiling temperatures. Overall, predictions made by CFAST were in good agreement with the data. There was a general tendency to over predict both the hot gas layer temperature and the boundary surface temperature which may be due to under prediction of boundary heat losses. Experimental results showed that heat release rates varied with ventilation configurations by as much as a factor of 3. This observation indicates that thewide practice of using free burn heat release rate data in compartment fire predictions can result in over prediction of compartment fire conditions.