Fire engineering formulae for building designers

This paper is intended to be a constructive approach to design against fire as this subject is less understood than design against wind or earthquake. Few buildings are subjected to full wind or earthquake design loads in their lifetime, whereas many buildings are subjected to fire. At present the importance of openings in a fire situation is not well understood in New Zealand. To demonstrate this and other matters, this paper reviews the work of overseas authors. It sets out useful fire engineering formulae which illustrate opportunities for building designers to adopt a more flexible approach. The importance of fire load, ventilation and compartment size is discussed. Formulae for assessing the fire grading of a building compartment, determining spandrel wall heights, sizes of automatic fire vents, separation distance between buildings, scaling laws for fire protection of small steel members and unprotected travel distance are provided. Model calculations are also included as appendices.