ABSTRACT
The rate at which energy is released in a compartment fire controls to a considerable extent the environmental consequences of the fire, such as the plume flows, the hot gas temperatures, and the rate of descent of the hot gas layer. The following chapters in this textbook outline a number of calculational procedures to enable an estimation of the environmental consequences of a fire. Most of these procedures require some knowledge of the energy release rate. This chapter outlines the methods commonly used to estimate the energy release rate produced by a fire.
