Arc mapping research

Establishing a compartment fire's area of origin when it has been burning at post-flashover conditions is a difficult process. Burn patterns traditionally used by fire investigators following post-flashover fires can be erroneous. This paper details research that explored the reliability of using the electrical wiring in a building to establish the origin of a fire. Forty two fully furnished experimental compartment fires using repetitive room configurations were used in the research and the resultant artefacts analysed with various types of microscopy. The analysis of the three-dimensional data indicated that there is a high probability that arcing damage observed on electrical conductors occurred in close proximity to the fire's area of origin. The series of experimental fires with repeated scenarios validated the reliability of using the arc fault mapping methodology during the investigation of fire scenes