Performance of Home Smoke Alarms - National Institute of ...

3 Fire Source Test Scenarios and GeometriesIn order to evaluate the performance of residential smoke alarms in-situ, a test series wasdesigned to encompass multiple fire scenarios, residential geometries, and alarm technologies.This section describes the design of the test series.3.1 Scenario DevelopmentOf key importance to the representativeness of the study was the selection of the test scenarios.These include the room of fire origin, ignition source and first item ignited, and the ventilationconditions that affect the fire development and combustion chemistry. Here we began with anNFPA analysis of USFA’s NFIRS data on fatal residential fires conducted for CPSC [18]. Thestatistics were categorized according to:• fire location (living room, bedroom, kitchen, and other),• fire type (smoldering, flaming, and fast flaming),• first item ignited.The data were divided into the most frequent fires, and fires resulting in the greatest number ofdeaths. Relatively hazardous fires may be fires that occur more frequently than others, or onesthat result in a high number of deaths. Of particular interest are fires that occur relativelyfrequently, and when they do, they result in a disproportionately high death rate. Table 6 showsthe top ten scenarios for frequency of occurrence and number of deaths. Flaming and smolderingupholstered furniture and mattresses account for the top four most deadly fire scenarios.Flaming cooking materials are involved more than five times more frequently than any othermaterial. The scenarios chosen for testing included the top five ranked by number of deaths, andamong the top ten ranked by frequency of occurrence:• smoldering upholstered furniture in the living room,• flaming upholstered furniture in the living room,• smoldering mattress in the bedroom,• flaming mattress in the bedroom, and• cooking materials in the kitchen.These chosen scenarios are consistent with typical scenarios included for the performance-baseddesign option in NFPA 101 [19] and available guides for performance-based design [20].65