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 determine if flashover would occur, and to find the temperature/time characteristics of the fire development. The cases of compartment walls of low/high thermal inertia were examined and the temporal characteristics found. Analysis was performed in terms of dimensionless groups. In this follow-up paper the case for walls of arbitrary thermal inertia, which is shown to have a significant effect is addressed. More general formulae are developed and the validity of using the special cases described in the previous study as useful approximations is examined.