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This report deals with the issue on design fires in underground mines.

The main purposes of the report are:

-          Describe different approaches to describe design fires.

-          Develop suitable design fires for different systems, mines, warehouses, workshops etc.

-          Discuss the position of the design fires with respect to adjacent installations, egress, interruptions in the production etc.

-          Discuss the influence of ventilation on the fire growth and its influence when working out the design fires.

-          Discuss the influence of fire fighting on the choice of design fires.

The following conclusions were made based upon the findings of the report:

The five selected and presented design fire curves of the report:

-          Pool fire in the main ramp (involving a diesel tank).

-          Vehicle fire (heavy vehicle) in a parking drift which is protected by a sprinkler system.

-          Vehicle fire (loader/drilling rig) in the production area.

-          Cable fire at the visitor museum, with no automatic fire alarm at the site of the fire.

-          Bus fire at the visitor museum, with no automatic fire alarm at the site of the fire.

The design fire curves represent various aspects and variables connected to an underground mine, such as active fire protection, ventilation, sensitive surroundings etc.

In future work the main effort should be aimed at developing other representative design fires for underground mines than the suggested design fire scenarios in this report, this would serve as a powerful tool during the design process when working on an underground mine.

In future work the three scenarios described in the report involving vehicles, design fire curves obtained by using physical models should be used. This means summing up the individual combustible components taking into consideration when ignition will occur.

The five presented design fire curves should be included in a continued study where for example the smoke spread is calculated and simulated using fire modelling software, presenting the effects on the surroundings that the selected design fires will have.