For a given application, there may be one, multiple, or no fire models possible. The intent of this guide is to provide a framework for the suitability of a particular fire model for use in a specific fire protection application.
Common applications include:
- Evaluating performance-based designs
- Supporting the development of fire hazards or risk analysis
- Illustrating principles of fire behavior and fire protection
- Testing hypotheses in forensic analyses
- Supporting fire research, both as a primary research tool and in experimental design
Fire models range from simple algebraic correlations that can be solved with a calculator to zone models to lumped-parameter models that represent space as a small number of elements to computational fluid dynamics to field models that approximate a space as a large number of discrete volumes.
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