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Fire load surveys in many building types are presented and analysed. They are based on two datasets which are studied in two separate chapters, after a brief presentation of the measurement method. The first dataset concerned fire loads in industrial and commercial buildings in Switzerland. ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hoschule Zürich) and VKF (Swiss Fire Authority, Berne) inspected 95 companies in about 40 industrial sectors leading to 336 measures. A statistical analysis is made and the agreement between those data and two probability laws is studied. It is shown that lognormal law provides a better agreement than Gumbel law. The second dataset concerns public buildings (such as shopping centers, hotels and hospitals) and offices in France for a total of 139 rooms. Those data were collected in the framework of "Projet National pour l'Ingénierie de la Sécurité Incendie" agreed by the French "Réseau Génie Civil & Urbain" (PNISI: National Project for Fire Safety Engineering). The same process as previously is applied: a chi-square test. Here, differences are not significant between Gumbel law and lognormal law. The explanation is related to the ratio of standard deviation over mean value which is much smaller for this dataset. It leads to equivalent distribution functions. The composition of fire load is also analyzed and reveals that wood material continues to be present in great proportion.

Summary This article aims at assessing the thermal action received by an unprotected steel structure during the combustion of alternative fuel vehicles. Five tests were realised in the underground of an airport hangar. To obtain a confinement effect and increase the probability of observing a thermal runaway of the traction battery, a second car was parked next to the alternative fuel vehicle. Five motorisations were tested: diesel fuel, H2 fuel cell, natural gas, electric, and liquefied petroleum gas. The diesel fuel car test served as reference case. The cars were located under a steel structure, representative of a car park, next to a wall. The wall served here to increase the confinement effect. Thirty‐nine sections of the structure were instrumented for a total of 200 thermocouples. An extensive analysis including fire behaviour for each test and comparisons between the tests is presented here.

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