For architectural and functional reasons, transport terminal buildings are frequently designed to incorporate large uncompartmented spaces. Fire resisting walls as means of limiting fire and smoke spread within these large spaces are therefore absent. This paper shows how fire safety may be achieved nevertheless for the case of a very large airport terminal building to be built in Osaka Bay in Japan. The fire safety strate~y relies essentially on two designed features. The first of these is that the areas of high fire load such as shops are limited in extent and well defined. It was proposed therefore that these areas should be protected separately by sprinklers and provided with a dedicated smoke extract on system. This is known as the "cabin concept". Secondly, areas of combustible material, including seating, tend to be well separated with large circulation spaces in between. By considering radiation from a severe fire in each such area, it was shown that fire spread between them was not a problem. This was termed the "island concept". This paper describes the calculations carried out and the results obtained. The design fires adopted, and many of the calculation procedures used were taken from the new Japanese Integrated Design Method for Fire Protection.

The application of fire safety research using engineering methods is frustrated by conventional attitudes. The desire of researchers to always achieve a greater level of understanding means that they cannot recognize that satisfactory engineering solutions may be achieved with partial information. The desire of regulators to have simple rules and tests for administrative convenience contrasts with the need of designers to have maximum flexibility in order to arrive at optimum solutions. The magic numbers embodied in regulations are accepted without question, while any engineering solution is subject to a disproportionately high standard of proof. To move forward, rules need to have an engineering basis and to be goal-related: The purpose of the rules needs to be understood by both researchers and regulators. IntroductlonThe value of this scientific conference is that it provides not only a forum for the exchange of information but also an opportunity for the exchange of ideas. Indeed, we understand that several new lines of research were conceived directly as a result of discussions at earlier IAFSS conferences. We, as practitioners, would also like to exchange ideas with scientists, and it is the purpose of this paper to stimulate similar discussions.During the closing sessions of most fire research conferences there is a plea for more contributions from the practitioners--the consultants and the fire service--and there is normally a murmur of agreement to this from the audience. At the next conference, therefore, a token consultant and a token fire officer will each present a paper. From long experience as token consultants, we know that any such paper will attract virtually no comment or there will be a trivial question which shows that the concepts have been misunderstood or ignored. It can be m'gued, of course, that the papers were badly written, but it is our view that many researchers are not interested in applications--that is, how designers and firemen solve practical problems--or they are interested in only a very narrow field of fire engineering.Not all researchers need to be interested in applications, but we believe that for many of us, it would be beneficial if we could have a better understanding of each This paper is reprinted from Fire Safety Science: Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium, with permission from the IAFSS.

A company operating a spray‐drying plant for skimmed milk and fat‐filled powders asked the Fire Research Station for help in determining the cause of a series of fires. The subsequent investigation showed that the powders could undergo spontaneous ignition in certain circumstances. The thicknesses of powder deposit on the spray‐drier walls necessary for there to be a risk of self‐ignition were calculated. These were sufficiently close to those encountered in practice to suggest that self‐ignition represents a real problem. Mechanisms for the occurrence of fires in the fluid‐bed instantizers are also put forward. Preventive measures are suggested.

The paper considers the prediction of time to operation of sprinklers, as well as the response of heat detectors to changing fire conditions. The discussion concentrates on devices having a heat-sensitive element which operates at a preset temperature, though rate-of-rise devices are also mentioned.If a thermal device is heated slowly and is not subject to heat losses, (so that it is close to being in thermal equilibrium with its surroundings), it will operate at a gas temperature equal to its set temperature. This is alternatively known as the actuation temperature or nominal operating temperature, Tnom. If the device is heated rapidly, its temperature will lag behind that of the surroundings. The faster the rate of change of ambient temperature, the greater the time lag will be. This arises because the device has a thermal capacity and cannot respond instantly to changes in the surroundings. The quantity which is used to characterise the time lag is known as the thermal time constant r. For an isolated body temperature T,, subject only to convective heat transfer from a hot gas flow at

The Forum is intended to provide for dialogue and discussion among fire experts, scientists and consultants. Contributions to The Forum will not be refereed in the conventional sense, but will be subject to review by the Journal's Editorial Board relative to appropriateness, clarity, timeliness, and scope of interest. The Editorial Board will be the sole judge of those contributions to be published. Opinions expressed, however, are those of the authors and not of the Editors or Technomic Publishing Company, Incor porated.