Fires in compartments: the phenomenon of flashover

It appears that fires in buildings are inevitable. All too often they lead to loss of life and large costs in repairing damage to a building's structu re and contents. There is a clear need not only to detect a fire in its ear ly stages of development but also to stop it from spreading to adjoining ar eas either by active preventive measures or by design. When applying mathem atical models to improve our basic understanding it becomes clear that an i n-depth knowledge of fire growth involves a range of interacting processes including combustion chemistry, heat transfer and fluid dynamics. The devel opment of a fire within a room needs to take into account additional factor s such as material properties, room configuration and ventilation. We intro duce here aspects that describe the evolution of a fire within a single roo m, particularly focusing attention on the sudden life-threatening phenomeno n of flashover which leads to full room involvement.