Selecting design fires

The fire safety of a performance-based design is often evaluated using deterministic analysis. In deterministic analysis, a number of representative fire scenarios, the design fire scenarios, are described and analysed. A quantitative description of the assumed fire characteristics for each fire scenario must then be made. These assumed fire characteristics are referred to as the design fire, i.e. there is one design fire associated with each design fire scenario. A design fire is often described in terms of heat release rate, fire load, toxic species and smoke production rate. This report provides exhaustive guidance for selecting design fires and it should be a useful resource for the fire protection engineer working with analyses involving design fires. The report describes a step-by-step working method for selecting design fires and explains factors that affect the design fire. The report also includes relevant calculation methods and references to where more data can be found.