Compartment fires

The study of fire dynamics in compartments establishes the basis for the design of fire safety strategies in buildings.

Despite the fact that the behaviour of compartment fires has largely been studied, the 'compartment fire' framework currently used for design is based on experimentation of cubic compartments of reduced floor area with low ventilation (Regime I fires).

At present, open plan floor compartments are the norm in tall and new buildings, thus deeming the current design framework incomplete. UQ Fire works on a series of projects focused on modelling and analysing data from recent full-scale fire experimentation in open floor compartments with large ventilation (Regime II fires), which were developed by the University of Edinburgh:

'Analysis of Energy Distribution in Large Open Plan Compartment Fires' led by Vinny Gupta (PhD).

'Characterisation of the 'Malveira Fire Test' led by Tristan Goode (BE-ME).

'Analysis of Energy Distribution in Open Plan Compartment Fires' completed in 2016 by Nicholas White (BE-ME).

'Distribution of Energy in Large Compartment Fires' completed in 2016 by Ben Linnan (BE).