Abstract With the ratification of IMO’s resolution MSC。99 (73) on 1st July 2002, in many classification societies, fire ship codes are shifting from prescriptive (rules in SOLAS) to performance-based (as long as an adequate level of safety is maintained) for technical, economic and social reasons。 This change is made possible by progress in fire safety technologies, including the development of engineering tools that are required to implement performance codes。 The performance-based design is a design activity that is based, on the analysis of a “phenomenon”, developed in case of fire event, and on the verification of adopted providences。 The success of performance-based codes depends on the ability to establish performance criteria that will be verifiable。 This paper firstly presents and discusses fire models for ships, deriving from those ones of buildings, which can be utilized to simulate the development of a fire event in a     compartment     or     groups     of      compartments。

Successively a study on the performance criteria, which can be currently used by fire protection engineers in designing fire safety in compartment of ships, is carried out。 This includes deterministic and probabilistic design criteria as well as safety factors。 The deterministic criteria relate mainly to life safety levels, fire growth and spread levels and fire exposure performance。 The probabilistic criteria focus on the incident severity and incident likelihood。 Additionally, the inclusion of safety factors permits a conservative design and allows for a smaller margin of error due to uncertainty in the models and the input data。 Finally, two examples demonstrate the practical applicability of the proposed performance criteria and their practical engineering relevance。81333

Keywords Fire event; performance criteria; flashover; prescriptive code; performance-based code。

Introduction It is well known that ship fire codes may be classified as prescriptive or performance-based。 In prescriptive codes, most requirements “stipulate” the solutions without  explicitly  stating  their  intent。  In performance

codes, however, desired objectives are presented and the designers are given the possibility to choose a solution that will meet the objectives。

Generally, prescriptive codes are used as the primary means of the fire ship safety design。 Many of these codes may be excessively restrictive because of the constant imposing of new requirements in addition to the existing ones。

As a consequence of this and the advances in fire safety engineering, it is possible to move towards the acceptance of performance-based codes。 This acceptance requires the development of performance fire safety engineering criteria to support these regulations in terms of assessing the acceptability of solutions against the established objectives。

The paper presents and discusses fire models for ships, deriving from those ones of buildings, which can be utilized to simulate the development of a fire event in a compartment or groups of compartments。 Starting from that one suggested by IMO resolution MSC。99(73): performance criteria shall provide a degree of safety not less than that achieved by using prescriptive requirements, a study on some performance criteria, which can be currently used by fire protection engineers in designing fire safety in compartments of ships, is carried out。 The paper also shows that, although there are still inconsistencies in these performance criteria, their development and use will result in more efficient and effective designs。

Advantages and Disadvantages  for  Shipping and Marine Industry

It is possible to synthesized the main advantages and disadvantages for the prescriptive and performance- based approaches:

Prescriptive codes