Dimensionless quantities in fire growth : the weighting of heat release rate

The role of various material fire properties in the model of fire growth developed by Magnusson and Karlsson [l] is examined in the context of the dimensionless variables containing them. It is shown that their successful representation of their calculations by power law (one for fires which do not flashover and one for those which do) permits one to devise weighting factors for the rate of heat release as a function of time for the particular scenario examined.