NATURE OF FIRE SIZE, FIRE SPREAD AND FIRE GROWTH.

As a fire increases in size there are two factors at work: The fire will spread to adjacent combustible items and so there is a progressive increase in the fire area. This part of the fire progress will be referred to as 'fire spread'. The fire will grow in heat output. That is to say, the heat output of unit area of the fire will start small, and it will increase with time until a final value is reached (for this paper we shall take the final value as being 0. 5 MegW/m**2). After this the heat output will decay as the fuel on that particular unit area is consumed. The article explores the information available about the fire growth process.