Probabilistic Fire Safety Assessment of Passenger Ships

A probabilistic framework is proposed for the assessment of passenger ship fire safety that is based on a structured generation of "design fires." The aim is to establish a rational and practical means for evaluating design selections (materials, geometry, sensors, and suppressors) that influence fire safety with reference to the implicit safety objectives attended by the current regulations. Thus, alternative design solutions could be evaluated more comprehensively. Fire growth intensity, restriction of heat release rate resulting from ventilation shortage, occurrence of flashover, and the final decay are key processes modeled in the current approach. They are interfaced with fire suppression triggered by detection. The effect of manual intervention is also assessed. An application is included based on uniform distributions of selected random parameters. Justification for the considered ranges is provided. The effect of assuming different probability distributions is considered. The methodology can be used for producing the probability of containment and extinguishment of fires as well as for judging the performance of an overall or partial ship design solution.