The effects of the thermal inertia of the walls upon flashover development

In recent studies by the authors of the early development of a compartment fire simple criteria have been found using the zone model approach to deter mine if flashover would occur, and to find the temperature/time characteris tics of the fire development. The cases of compartment walls of low/high th ermal inertia were examined and the temporal characteristics found. Analysi s was performed in terms of dimensionless groups. In this follow-up paper t he case for walls of arbitrary thermal inertia, which is shown to have a si gnificant effect is addressed. More general formulae are developed and the validity of using the special cases described in the previous study as usef ul approximations is examined. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights re served.