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A simple procedure is presented for estimating room temperature and the likelihood of the occurrence of flashover in an enclosure. The engineer can use the results for quantitative estimations of the effects of building design and fire load on the tendency for flashover as defined by a temperature limit.T HE ABILITY to predict the onset of flashover would be a useful tool for the designer, code official, or others concerned with building firesafety. A large amount of effort is being expended at the moment in the fire research community directed at precisely this end. Recent advances in fire modeling have made possible the development of computer simulations of the growth and spread of fire in an enclosure. It is now possible to predict the outcome of a fire from a burning object in a single compartment given information about the geometry of the room, properties of the wall material, the nature and size of the ignition source, the fuel array and its burning characteristics, etc. Examples of the input requirements and an assessment of the agreement between the predictive results and experimental data are available.l.2.8Although very useful in elucidating the physics and chemistry of fire growth and spread, these models tend to be extremely complex and will require several more years of development before they can be routinely utilized by the practicing fire safety specialist. What is needed in the interim are formulae or procedures for analysis which, while remaining tractable, will yield good estimates of the behavior of the fire. This approximate or coarser approach will obviously be less accurate than the complete computer solutions but will have the benefit of being able to be applied very simply yet still preserve the elements of a rational approach to hazard 98

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