ABSTRACT
To design structures to resist re loading, an assessment of the likely gas temperatures to which they may be subjected is required. This is turn requires consideration of the behaviour of res that may occur within structures. Since modelling burning in compartment res presents considerable challenges to re scientists, for structural re engineering application, grossly simplifying assumptions have to be made to enable usable gas temperature-time relationships to be obtained. These relationships are then used as the thermal boundary conditions of the structure in subsequent calculations. This chapter discusses the various phenomena that govern the behaviour of res that may occur in buildings and presents the models that are available to represent such res. The models are presented broadly in the order in which they were developed, with emphasis placed on the more recently developed models of res because these are most applicable to performance-based design.
