Building codes in many countries around the world are shifting from prescriptive-based to performance-based, a move that is due, in part, to the negative aspects of the prescriptive codes, to economic and social reasons, to advances made in fire science and engineering, to the need for codes to use fire safety engineering principles within the context of their regulations and to the global harmonization of regulation systems. In addition, the performance-based codes approach improves the regulatory environment by establishing clear code objectives and safety criteria and leaving the means of achieving these objectives to the designer. Hence, the codes will be more flexible in allowing innovation, more functional, less complex and easier to apply. Another advantage of performance-based codes is that they will permit the incorporation and use of the latest building and fire research, data and models. These models will be used as the tools for measuring the performance of any number of design alternatives against the established safety levels. The optimum design would meet the code safety objectives and the needs of both the designer and the user. The claimed advantages of such a design is that it can provide improved safety and design functionality at reduced costs. This paper presents the results of the literature survey on the efforts to move from the prescriptive building regulations to performance-based regulations. This paper also describes the required steps for developing performance-based codes. The description outlines the set of objectives formulated internationally, the deterministic and probabilistic design criteria for quantifying the desired fire safety objectives, and safety factors that should be applied to the performance criteria to permit the designer to conservatively assess the design and to allow for a smaller margin of error. Finally, some of the existing fire safety design methods are presented along with a brief description of computerized fire tools.

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/npsi/ctrl?action=rtdoc&an=20330839&lang=en http://nparc.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/npsi/ctrl?action=rtdoc&an=20330839&lang=fr READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS WEBSITE.http://nparc.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/npsi/jsp/nparc_cp.jsp?lang=en Vous avez des questions? Nous pouvons vous aider. Pour communiquer directement avec un auteur, consultez la première page de la revue dans laquelle son article a été publié afin de trouver ses coordonnées. Si vous n'arrivez pas à les repérer, communiquez avec nous à PublicationsArchive-ArchivesPublications@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca.

/npsi/ctrl?lang=en http://nparc.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/npsi/ctrl?lang=fr Access and use of this website and the material on it are subject to the Terms and Conditions set forth at http://nparc.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/npsi/jsp/nparc_cp.jsp?lang=en NRC Publications Archive Archives des publications du CNRCThis publication could be one of several versions: author's original, accepted manuscript or the publisher's version. / La version de cette publication peut être l'une des suivantes : la version prépublication de l'auteur, la version acceptée du manuscrit ou la version de l'éditeur. For the publisher's version, please access the DOI link below./ Pour consulter la version de l'éditeur, utilisez le lien DOI ci-dessous.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0926-5805(98)00096-X Automation in Construction, 8, 4, pp. 489-501, 1999-04-01 Performance criteria used in fire safety design Hadjisophocleous, G. V.; Bénichou, N. AbstractIn many countries around the world, building codes are shifting from prescriptive-to performance-based for technical, economic, and social reasons. This move is made possible by progress in fire safety technologies, including the development of engineering tools that are required to implement performance codes. The development of performance-based codes follows a transparent, hierarchical structure in which there are usually three levels of objectives. The top level objectives usually state the functional requirements and the lowest level the performance criteria. Usually, one middle level exists, however, more levels can be used in this hierarchical structure depending on the complexity of the requirements. The success of performance-based codes depends on the ability to establish performance criteria that will be verifiable and enforceable. The performance criteria should be such that designers can easily demonstrate, using engineering tools, that their designs meet them and that the code authority can enforce them. This paper presents the performance criteria that are currently used by fire protection engineers in designing fire safety systems in buildings. These include deterministic and probabilistic design criteria as well as safety factors. The deterministic criteria relate mainly to life safety levels, fire growth and spread levels, fire exposure and structural performance. The probabilistic criteria focus on the incident severity and incident likelihood. Finally, the inclusion of safety factors permits a conservative design and allows for a smaller margin of error due to uncertainty in the models and the input data. Crown Copyright© 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

SUMMARYModels are available to predict the fire-resistance ratings of wood-frame assemblies protected by gypsum board. These models have been developed to predict the performance of assemblies exposed to a standard fire test in which temperatures increase monotonically. In an ongoing effort to model the fire resistance of light-frame wood floor assemblies, in this study, a number of improvements over past heat transfer models have been made in an attempt to simulate assembly performance in any arbitrary fire exposure. For this purpose, the heat transfer analysis has been coupled with a mass transfer analysis. The calcination of gypsum board and pyrolysis of wood are now modelled using an Arrhenius expression.In order to evaluate the accuracy of the model, a series of cone calorimeter experiments have been conducted in an effort to generate experimental data under well-defined boundary conditions. Comparisons between test results and the predictions from a one-dimensional heat and mass transfer analysis are encouraging with excellent agreement in predicting the point at which gypsum board is fully calcinated. A lack of material property data, particularly the permeability of gypsum board, remains a limiting factor in further improvement of the accuracy of the model.