Experimental and numerical study on water mist suppression system on room fire

Full-scale experiment and numerical simulations are carried out on a room fire to study water mist suppression system with heat release rate of 6 MW. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of fire-driven fluid flow, FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator), is used to solve numerically a form of the Navier–Stokes equations for fire. A fire experiment without water mist is performed and the temperatures are measured to validate the predictions of FDS code against the experimental data. Then a fire experiment with water mist suppression system is performed and the temperatures and extinguishing time are measured. The validated numerical model is used to simulate the experiment; the temperatures, oxygen concentration and extinguishing time are compared and studied. In numerical simulations, the cell size sensitivity is analyzed. The experimental results of temperatures and extinguishing time are compared with the results of numerical simulations. It appears that the numerical results are in good agreement (qualitatively) with the experimental data in temperature fields. These useful data can be helpful in accomplishing the design of water mist suppression system and the design regulations for fire safety management.     

A quasi-steady-state model for predicting fire suppression in spaces protected by water mist systems

A quasi-steady-state model was developed to predict the effectiveness of a water mist system for extinguishing fuel spray and pool fires. The model was developed for obstructed fires where extinguishment primarily occurs as a result of a reduction in oxygen concentration due to the consumption of oxygen by the fire and due to dilution of the oxygen with water vapor. Interactions between the mist and the flame are neglected resulting in limiting case predictions. The model is based on conservation of energy and requires the following input parameters: fire size, compartment geometry, vent area, and water flow rate. The steady-state temperatures and oxygen concentrations predicted by the model can be used to determine the smallest fire that can be extinguished. The predictions made by the model compared favorably to the results of three full-scale test series conducted for the US Coast Guard. These tests were conducted in shipboard machinery spaces with compartment volumes ranging from 100 to 500 m³ with a wide range of ventilation rates and openings. The model was able to accurately predict the compartment temperatures during the tests where steady-state conditions were produced. The model was also able to accurately predict the extinguishment times for a wide range of fire sizes and was used to identify the smallest fire that could be extinguished for a given set of conditions.     

Numerical simulation of fire in a tunnel: Comparative study of CFAST and CFX predictions

The mathematical modeling of fire growth and smoke movement in any enclosure is a formidable task. Two types of deterministic models are in vogue, zone models and field models (popularly known as CFD technique). CFAST is a popular zone model used for modeling of fires in enclosures. Likewise, CFX is a general purpose CFD code used for various purposes including modeling of fires. In the present paper, a tunnel of length 150 m having a rectangular cross-section of 80 m² has been considered for analyzing the temperature and velocity profiles generated by fire, placed at a distance of 20 m from one end of portal, by both CFAST and CFX. The simulation by CFAST has been carried out by dividing the tunnel into 1, 2, 5, 8, 10, 12 and 15 compartments of equal size, where these compartments are joined by openings or vents having same cross-section as that of the tunnel. In case of tunnel divided into 15 compartments the fire source position lies at the position of vent; CFAST predicted very high temperatures. The simulations have also been carried out by dividing tunnel into unequal sized compartments such that position of fire was at the center of the compartment. It was found that for accuracy of results, location of fire source inside compartment is an important factor. Computational difficulty was experienced when tunnel was divided into more than 15 compartments. In this paper, a comparative study of temperatures predicted by CFAST and CFX has been done. The CFX and CFAST predictions show that smoke temperature changes with a pattern roughly similar to that of heat release rate. The temperature profiles at selected positions cannot be predicted by CFAST unlike CFX. The detailed features like flame tilt, flow field can only be observed from CFX predictions.     

Application of field model and two-zone model to flashover fires in a full-scale multi-room single level building

This paper presents a comparison of the results from a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model and a two-zone model against a comprehensive set of data obtained from one flashover fire experiment. The experimental results were obtained from a full-scale prototype apartment building under flashover conditions. Three polyurethane mattresses were used as fuel. The CFAST two-zone model (version 2.0) was also used to predict results for this flashover fire test. The mass release rate, gas temperature, radiation heat flux and gas compositions (O₂, CO₂ and CO) were measured. A CFD program, CESARE-CFD Fire Model, has been developed and was used also to predict results for polyurethane-slab fire. A simple flame spread model was incorporated into the CFD program to predict the mass release rate and heat release rate during the fire instead of providing it as an input as is required for most zone and CFD models. It was found that the CFD model provided reasonable predictions of the magnitude and the trends for the temperatures in the burn room and the species concentrations, but over-predicted the temperatures in the adjacent enclosures. From a life safety perspective, the CFD model conservatively predicted the concentrations of CO and CO₂. The predicted temperatures from the CFAST fire model agreed well with the experimental results in most areas. However, the CFAST model under predicted the temperature in the lower layer of the room of fire origin and the concentration of CO in most areas.     

Numerical Simulation of Fire Exposed Façades Using LEPIR II Testing Facility

The fire behavior of external wall insulation system on façades is assessed during LEPIR II testing. This facility involves a 600 kg wood crib fire in a 30 m³ lower compartment of a two levels high concrete structure. External flames develop in front of the façade from the fire compartment through windows with dimensions 1?×?1.5 m (W?×?H). In order to predict the fire exposure of a façade during the test, CFD simulations were carried out with the computational fluid dynamics code Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) for two full-scale experiments. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the ability of FDS to reproduce quantitative results in terms of gas temperatures and heat fluxes close to the tested façade. This is an important step before the fire performances of any insulation system can be predicted by numerical tools. A good repeatability was observed in terms of measured gas temperatures for experiments. Maximum heat release rate of the fire, close to 5 MW, was achieved after 5 min of test. When experimental results were compared with numerical calculations, good agreement was found for every quantity. The most critical zone on the facade is located above the fire room and is directly impacted by external flame outgoing from the fire compartment. Temperatures up to 500°C were observed in this zone. For the thermocouples located up to the second level opening, these probes were not located directly in the flames, but rather in the hot gases above the fire plume. The maximum temperature achieved was thus close to 400°C. The proposed model gives correct thermal loads and flames shape near the façade during calibration tests and can be used for further evaluation of combustible material on façade.     

Simulating one of the CIB W14 round robin test cases using the SMARTFIRE fire field model

Numerical predictions produced by the SMARTFIRE fire field model are compared with experimental data. The predictions consist of gas temperatures at several locations within the compartment over a 60 min period. The test fire, produced by a burning wood crib attained a maximum heat release rate of approximately 11 MW. The fire is intended to represent a non-spreading fire (i.e. single fuel source) in a moderately sized ventilated room. The experimental data formed part of the CIB Round Robin test series. Two simulations are produced, one involving a relatively coarse mesh and the other with a finer mesh. While the SMARTFIRE simulations made use of a simple volumetric heat release rate model, both simulations were found capable of reproducing the overall qualitative results. Both simulations tended to over-predict the measured temperatures. However, the finer mesh simulation was better able to reproduce the qualitative features of the experimental data. The maximum recorded experimental temperature (1214°C after 39 min) was over-predicted in the fine mesh simulation by 12%.     

Comparison of Numerical and Experimental Results of Fire Induced Doorway Flows

The ability to calculate the changes to vent flows when a sprinkler activates can lead to improved predictions of fire environments outside of the room of origin in sprinklered occupancies, ultimately leading to an engineering design tool based on numerical simulations. Hence, for the current study, numerical calculations using NIST Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) are compared with real scale compartment experimental data for unsprinklered and sprinklered cases. Mass flow rate and temperature are typical parameters used to quantify the flow induced by a fire in a compartment. Hence, numerical results for doorway mass flow rate and temperature are compared with the experimental data for three fire sizes in order to validate the numerical model. Then, using current experimental data for sprinkler characteristics, numerical calculations for doorway mass flow rate and temperature are compared with the experimental data for the three fire sizes of the sprinklered case.     

Experimental study and numerical simulation for a storehouse fire accident

Full-scale experiment and numerical simulations are carried out on a shelf fire in a storehouse to study the ignition manner, the fire spread and the combustion characteristics. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of fire-driven fluid flow, FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator), is used to solve numerically a form of the Navier–Stokes equations for fire. Ignition manner experiments with both cigarette ends and lighter are conducted first. Then a full-scale experiment on a shelf fire is performed. The temperatures are measured and the fire growth and spread process is analyzed. A numerical model is used to simulate the experiment; the temperatures, fire growth and heat release rate are studied. In numerical simulations, the grid size resolution is analyzed. The experimental results of temperatures and the fire growth and spread process are compared with the results of numerical simulations. It shows that the numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental results. The chimney effect is also observed in both the experiment and the simulation. These useful data can be helpful in the numerical reconstruction of the whole storehouse fire accident.     

CALFIRE: An interactive model for fire calculations

CALFIRE, the acronym for CALculate Fire In Room and Enclosure, is a knowledge-based mathematical formulation of analytical and numerical procedures to predict the consequences of a fire in a room or enclosure. CALFIRE is a well-knit and integrated computer model that offers menu items such as heat release rate (HRR), flame height, vent size, and room temperatures of closed rooms, and rooms with natural and forced ventilation. Warnings and checks have been provided to prevent the misuse of the model. Care has been taken to require minimal keyboard responses in order to make CALFIRE a truly user-friendly, interactive fire model.     

Development of a Gaussian glass breakage model within a fire field model

A glass breakage model has been implemented within the existing FDS fire field model. The field model allows the prediction of radiative and convective heating to solid-phase objects. This is utilised by filtering, within the code, the objects to be modelled as glass, and then linking a one-dimensional heat transfer across those objects to a Gaussian spread of breaking temperatures across panes within the compartment being modelled. The gas- and solid-phase heat transfer methods are described along with the implemented glass breakage model. A case study is then presented involving the modelling of a large-scale compartment fire in a building with a high degree of glazing. A key factor in the severity of the atmospheric conditions, and the variations in temperature prediction, comes as a result of the different breaking patterns of glass around the compartment. The Gaussian glass breakage model emphasises this, and equivalently high local temperatures are not predicted when the typically adopted method of solid-object removal is used, or when the assumption of an ‘open’ compartment condition, where all the glazing is removed, is modelled. Changing ventilation patterns from a Gaussian breakage model are thus shown to produce markedly different gas temperature predictions than other methods. The new glass brakeage model presented in this paper can be implemented into any existing CFD fire field model and is not exclusive to FDS.     

Development of a computational model simulating the interaction between a fire plume and a sprinkler spray

Numerical simulations to predict actual delivered densities (ADDs) of early suppression fast response (ESFR) sprinklers in heptane spray fire scenarios were sought. First, in order to supply input data for the development of numerical models and experimental data for validation of the models, four sets of measurements were carried out: the momentum and water flux distribution of two ESFR sprinkler sprays without fire; the temperature and axial velocities along the axis of free-burn fires; and the actual delivered densities. Then, a numerical model for a sprinkler spray was completed by assigning the representative drop size, mass flow rate, discharge speed and discharge angle of 275 trajectories in such a way that they produced reasonable agreement with the measured water flux distribution and spray momentum in the absence of fire. A numerical model for the free-burn fire was created by assigning a heat flux distribution on a horizontal surface and simulating a central, vertical air jet used in the experiment, varying parameters until a reasonable match was established with the measured temperatures and the axial velocities along the axis. Numerical computations of actual delivered densities were carried out by combining the water spray model and the free-burn fire model for different water flow rates of the sprinklers. The ADDs obtained from the simulations compared reasonably well with those from the measurements.     

Effects of exposed cross laminated timber on compartment fire dynamics

A series of compartment fire experiments has been undertaken to evaluate the impact of combustible cross laminated timber linings on the compartment fire behaviour. Compartment heat release rates and temperatures are reported for three configuration of exposed timber surfaces. Auto-extinction of the compartment was observed in one case but this was not observed when the experiment was repeated under identical condition. This highlights the strong interaction between the exposed combustible material and the resulting fire dynamics. For large areas of exposed timber linings heat transfer within the compartment dominates and prevents auto-extinction. A framework is presented based on the relative durations of the thermal penetration time of a timber layer and compartment fire duration to account for the observed differences in fire dynamics. This analysis shows that fall-off of the charred timber layers is a key contributor to whether auto-extinction can be achieved.     

Engineering Approach for Designing a Thermal Test of Real-Scale Steel Beam Exposed to Localized Fire

This paper reports the design and results of a thermal test on heating of a 6 m long steel W beam subjected to a localized fire conducted at the National Fire Research Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. A engineering approach was proposed to determine the heat release rate of the test fire. By the approach, a recently developed simple fire model was first used to approximately calculate the heat release rate and then a sophisticated model was used to check/refine the calculation. The concept of adiabatic surface temperature was used in the sophisticated model to represent the thermal boundary conditions at exposed surfaces in fire. The proposed approach successfully predicted the critical value of heat release rate of 500 kW to reach a target temperature of \(500^{\circ }\hbox {C}\) in the test specimen. A calibration test was also conducted to understand the difference between the predicted and measured steel temperatures in the investigated test, and found that the sophisticated model over-predict the adiabatic surface temperatures which would contribute to the over-prediction of the steel temperatures. The error of the predicted maximum steel temperature in the test specimen was within 10%. The study reported here is not necessarily a validation of the sophisticated model, rather the study provides a successful case study using current knowledge and tools to design realistic and controlled fire tests.     

Experimental study on fire performance of cross laminated timber structure exposed to compartment fire

为了研究室内自然火灾作用下可燃的正交胶合木(cross laminated timber, CLT)对CLT房间火灾荷载的贡献和不同层板组成的CLT对火灾的动态影响，开展4次内表面受火面积不同、板材层板组成不同的CLT房间自然火灾试验，直接受火CLT面积占CLT房间内表面积百分比分别为0%、19.8%、36.4%和87.6%；并以双区域模型为基础，建立考虑炭化层脱落的CLT结构室内自然火灾温度场计算模型，对CLT房间火灾试验进行模拟，分析双区域模型应用于CLT结构自然火灾时的有效性及局限性。试验结果表明：CLT受火面积对室内自然火灾发展过程及热量释放影响显著，随着CLT受火面积的增大燃烧速率显著提高，火灾的热释放速率增大；炭化层是否脱落对火灾发展过程影响显著，炭化层脱落时间及区域存在随机性；CLT单层层板厚度越薄，炭化层越早发生脱落；考虑CLT燃烧及炭化层脱落的双区域模型可一定程度上准确模拟CLT房间自然火灾室内空气温度，但是火灾降温阶段双区域模型预测的温度始终低于试验温度。     

室内火灾作用下正交胶合木结构受火性能研究

为了研究室内自然火灾作用下可燃的正交胶合木(cross laminated timber, CLT)对CLT房间火灾荷载的贡献和不同层板组成的CLT对火灾的动态影响,开展4次内表面受火面积不同、板材层板组成不同的CLT房间自然火灾试验,直接受火CLT面积占CLT房间内表面积百分比分别为0%、19.8%、36.4%和87.6%;并以双区域模型为基础,建立考虑炭化层脱落的CLT结构室内自然火灾温度场计算模型,对CLT房间火灾试验进行模拟,分析双区域模型应用于CLT结构自然火灾时的有效性及局限性。试验结果表明：CLT受火面积对室内自然火灾发展过程及热量释放影响显著,随着CLT受火面积的增大燃烧速率显著提高,火灾的热释放速率增大;炭化层是否脱落对火灾发展过程影响显著,炭化层脱落时间及区域存在随机性;CLT单层层板厚度越薄,炭化层越早发生脱落;考虑CLT燃烧及炭化层脱落的双区域模型可一定程度上准确模拟CLT房间自然火灾室内空气温度,但是火灾降温阶段双区域模型预测的温度始终低于试验温度。     

纵向通风隧道内火灾烟气流动的控制

讨论了纵向通风隧道火灾和相关烟气形成现象。利用计算机流体动力模型模拟烟气流动，获得可以与试验数据进行比较的预测结果。在Richardson数字基础上，采用了不同参考稳定值，结果发现，直接利用火灾热释放速率所获得的温度值会产生最有用的结果。试验结果与数值预测结果的比较发现，两者吻合较好。笔者验证了利用容积测定火源模拟火灾的情况。结果的准确性很大程度上取决于对墙和屋顶的热传递。     

A study of non-flashover and flashover fires in a full-scale multi-room building

Realistic fire environments in a prototype multi-room apartment in a multi-storey building are studied. The fires are designed as non-flashover and flashover types, using standard polyurethane mattresses as fuel. A comprehensive set of experimental data is presented. The measured results include flame spread velocity, mass release rate, gas temperature, radiation heat flux and gas analysis. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model, called a CESARE-CFD fire model, has been used to simulate these polyurethane slab fires. The CFD model is described by three-dimensional transport equations for mass, momentum and enthalpy. The turbulence flow was modelled using the k−ϵ model. A soot formation model and a flame spread model were incorporated into the CFD model. The flame spread velocity and the mass release rate of the polyurethane slab fires were predicted in this study. It was found that the CFD model provided reasonable predictions of the magnitude and trends for the experiments both in the non-flashover and flashover fire cases.     

Heat transfer model for unprotected steel members in a standard compartment fire with participating medium

A heat transfer model accounting for the radiative properties of combustion products in a compartment standard fire is presented. The model used is based on a conceptual scheme of a grey gas mixture exchanging radiative energy with a black enclosure. The proposed model, with a radiation heat transfer that accounts for the effect of combustion products on the rate of heat transfer from the fire to the structural elements, is simple to use and the predictions of the temperature response of unprotected I-columns heated from all sides are superior to those predicted by the classical method using the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation equation with constant emissivity.     

Definition and experimental evaluation of the smoke “confinement velocity” in tunnel fires

An experimental study is carried out on a reduced scale tunnel model (scale reduction is 1:20). The main objective is to evaluate the longitudinal velocity induced into a tunnel when a fire plume continuously released is confined and extracted between two exhaust vents located on both sides of the fire source. For the experimental simulations, fire-induced smoke is simulated by an air and helium mix release. Smoke flow is symmetrical as regards the fire location and experiments are realized for an half tunnel with only one vent activated downstream the source. The vent extraction flow rate is step by step increased and the length of the stratified smoke layer downstream the vent as well as the longitudinal fresh air flow induced, are measured. A confinement velocity is then associated to the minimum value of the longitudinal air flow needed to prevent the smoke layer propagation downstream the vent. This velocity is evaluated for several values of the fire heat release rate and finally compared with the corresponding critical velocity obtained for a longitudinal ventilation system.