External fire spread, Supplementary guidance to BR 187 incorporating probabilistic and time-based approaches

BRE is the UK’s leading centre of expertise on the built environment, construction, energy use in buildings, fire prevention and control, and risk management.

External fire spread - Supplementary guidance to BR 187 incorporating probabilistic and time-based approaches was published by BRE on 31 May 2016. It was written by Dr Sung-han Koo.

The Information Paper was prepared following revision of BR 187 External fire spread: building separation and boundary distances, when it became apparent the methodology and some of the assumptions used may not be valid for some features in modern buildings. It is intended to provide guidance to engineers who wish to take alternative fire engineering approaches when calculating building separation distance and to help them make judgements about which elements of the design to focus on.

The Paper reviews existing fire compartment temperature calculation methods and presents methodologies for assessing the sensitivity of the parametric approach to variations in fire load, window size and insulation of compartment boundaries. Analyses of how these changes affect building separation distances are summarised.

In addition to the steady state assumption in BR 187, probabilistic and time-based approaches are also considered.

The contents of the paper are:

• Introduction.
• Fire models and compartment temperature calculation methods.
• Methods for calculating compartment temperatures.
• Comparison of fire compartment temperature calculation methods.
• Probabilistic and time-based methodologies.
• Conclusions.
• References.

See also: External fire spread: building separation and boundary distances (BR 187).

--BRE Group

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Comments

Good description.