ABSTRACT
Fire protection measures cannot be expected to cope with all possible sizes of fires. The best that can be achieved is to design these measures around a large or maximum size that is likely to be encountered. Determination of such a size, defined as the ‘design fire size’, is fundamental to the design of fire detection, sprinkler and smoke ventilation systems, particularly for buildings where the fire safety engineering approach is more common, e.g. retail premises, shopping complexes, atrium buildings. The design fire size is expressed in terms of the amount of heat output likely to be produced in a large fire. This amount depends on fire load and other factors affecting the growth of fire in the space considered.
