Detection of a typical arson fire scenario - comparison between experiments and simulations

Between one and two school fires occur in Sweden every day. In most cases, arson is the cause of the fire. The most severe fires generally start outside the building and spread up along the facade and into the attic through ventilation openings in the eaves. Linear heat detectors can be placed on facades to detect these types of fires. Such devices detect fire when short-circuited at a specific temperature. In this article, an attempt to simulate linear heat detectors is presented. Data from small-scale and full-scale experiments are compared with these simulations. The small-scale experiments and simulations demonstrate that the cable failure model in Fire Dynamics Simulator can be used to predict detection in linear heat detectors that use short-circuiting as the means of signaling an overheated condition. The full-scale experiments provide a measure of the uncertainties involved, as well as the possibility of using simulations of linear heat detectors in a fire engineering design.