Design Fire Methodology for Vehicle Spaces Onboard Ships

The purpose of this paper is to contribute towards establishing procedures of assessment of the fire safety of Ro-Ro ship cargo spaces, by employing suitable design fires. Data collected from fire experiments involving vehicles are utilized in order to deduce representative heat release rates for common types of passenger cars and heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). An existing mathematical scheme for generating parametric heat release rate curves is extended for handling vehicle fire scenarios. The methodology is demonstrated through a case study. In particular, the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) code is used for investigating fire propagation on the vehicle deck of a Ro-Ro ship, initiated from a single HGV. On this deck are assumed to be transported a combination of cars and HGVs. The evolution of the fire is assessed assuming different ventilation conditions. The circumstances for spreading to adjacent vehicles are examined. Human survivability and the time that the deck remains accessible are evaluated by considering the International Maritime Organization (IMO) life safety performance criteria.