Admission and Unit Information - Graduate Diploma in Fire Safety Engineering

This unit introduces the Building Code of Australia (BCA) and in particular those aspects relevant to fire safety in building design and construction. The topics covered with reference to the BCA include its general provisions, structure and philosophy. Students are required to understand how to meet the BCA requirements for fire safety. Covered in this unit are performance based versus prescriptive approaches and the regulation of fire safety maintenance. The unit also discusses the relationship between research in the development of building codes and the role played by approval/certifying authorities in compliance assessment.

This unit aims to develop a detailed knowledge of fire behaviour and dynamics in the built environment. Students will be able to understand fuels and combustion processes; the chemistry of combustion; flammability limits; ignition characteristics; and different types of flames and fire plumes. The content also covers the burning of liquids and solids; flammable vapour/air mixtures; extinction and extinguishment; flame spread mechanisms and modeling; flashover; fire resistance and fire severity; projection of flames from burning compartment openings; spread of fire from a compartment; production and measurement of smoke; and smoke movement.

This unit introduces the concept of risk assessment for fire safety systems relevant to life safety and property protection. The unit helps students develop an understanding of building occupant characteristics and human behaviour during fire emergencies. Parameters, methods and criteria for risk and economic assessments are covered in this unit.

This unit describes the various types and application of building services and fire safety systems. It introduces appropriate standards for building fire service system design and the methods of applying recommendations of fire engineering assessments with respect to building services and fire safety systems.

This unit aims to develop an understanding of various types of computational tools used in engineering design of fire safety systems. The fundamentals of control volume, applications of conservations laws in modeling and the form of predictive equations are explained. The content includes evaluations of fire severity, fire resistance levels of various types of building structures and elements. Hand calculation equations, zone models and field models are covered. The limitations of the models in representing the real phenomena are also discussed.

This unit helps to develop a high level of knowledge of fire safety systems relevant to life protection and the design and assessment of such systems. The unit covers the process of fire safety engineering design and assessment including the fire engineering brief, conceptual design, regulatory objectives, fire safety engineering subsystems, verification methods, timeline analysis, design fires, evaluation of performance of passive and active fire protection systems, risk analysis and fire engineering project reporting.