cda,

In thinking about this, there are books that may be more practical for you to read and other books that you will want to have as references that I would consider "gateways" to the available scientific literature. This is a short list (in no particular order) that will get you started since it will easily deplete any reasonable book budget. There are many other books that I have bought and have found useful including text books, conference proceedings and journal publications, but these are a good start. I would start with Quintiere's book on fire behavior as the first book to read and I would get the Ignition Handbook as the first reference to buy that you will use frequently followed by the SFPE Handbook and the NFPA FP Handbook.

Hope this is helpful to you.

Doug


Read:

Principles of Fire Behavior (Quintiere)
Principle of Fire Protection (Cote and Bugbee)
Principles of Fire Protection Chemsitry and Physics (Friedman)
Enclosure Fire Dynamics (Quintiere and Karlsson)
Building Construction for the Fire Service (Brannigan)
Fire Dynamics Tools (NRC)
Select Papers in the 2007 and 2008 ISFI proceedings (NAFI)

Reference:

An Introduction to Fire Dynamics (Drysdale)
Fundamentals of Fire Phenomena (Quintiere)
Combustion Fundamentals of Fire (Cox)
SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering
NFPA Fire Protection Handbook (Two Volumes)
Ignition Handbook (Babrausbas)
NFPA Industrial Fire Hazards Handbook (Cote)
Heat Release in Fires (Babrauskas)
Fire Behavior of Upholstered Furniture and Mattresses (Krasny, Parker, and Babrauskas)
Industrial Fire Protection Engineering (Zalosh)

Douglas J. Carpenter, MScFPE, CFEI, PE, FSFPE
Vice President & Principal Engineer
Combustion Science & Engineering, Inc.
8940 Old Annapolis Road, Suite L
Columbia, MD 21045
(410) 884-3266
(410) 884-3267 (fax)
www.csefire.com