Flame heat transfer in storage geometries

This paper presents measurements of the heat flux distribution to the surface of four square towers exposed to buoyant turbulent flames.The steel towers represent an idealisation of a rack storage configuration at reduced scale. Each tower was 1.8 m high and 0.3 m×0.3 m wide. The fuel was supplied from a circular gas burner at the floor. Three different gaseous fuels were used: carbon monoxide (CO), propane (C₃H₈), and propylene (C₃H₆). These fuels cover a wide range of flame sootiness resulting in distinctly different flame heat fluxes. At the same overall heat release rates the peak heat fluxes from C₃H₈ flames were twice those from CO flames, whereas the peak heat fluxes from C₃H₈ flames were 2.8 times those from CO flames. Heat fluxes were measured by thermocouples spot-welded to the back of the steel sheets. They were measured at 52 different locations. This measurement method turns out to be simple, accurate and robust in addition to being inexpensive. Formulas are provided for the flame heat flux distribution in terms of the overall fire heat release rate, fuel sootiness and separation distance between the towers. The formulas are suitable for direct use by engineering models of fire growth in storage geometries. The paper also provides additional data needed for the development of more general CFD models capable of predicting fire growth of other geometries.     

The effect of surface coatings on fire growth over composite materials in a corner configuration

Structural composites are vulnerable to fire in two respects: (1) their resin content may ignite and enable the spread of flames over the surface of the structure; (2) the resin may degrade from the heat of a localized fire exposure thus weakening the composite structure. The present study focuses mainly on the first issue, in particular, on the ability of various commercial coatings to prevent flame spread. The second issue is examined briefly by applying thermocouples to the back surface of test specimens. Four commercial coatings have been tested over an unretarded vinyl ester/glass composite. In addition an uncoated phenolic/glass composite and a polyester/glass composite coated with a fire retarded resin were tested. In all cases the configuration was a 3.3 m high corner with a 53 cm square propane gas burner at its base, operated at 250 kW as the fire exposure. The results show that, with the proper choice of coating and coating thickness, fire growth can be suppressed quite effectively. Two of the coatings, applied at a substantial thickness, were reasonably effective at slowing the penetration of heat to the back of the composite panels. The other coatings, much thinner in application, were notably less effective at slowing heat penetration.     

Skin temperatures of a pre-cooled wet person exposed to engulfing flames

In a television show, a wetted bare-skinned person slid through engulfing kerosene pool fire flames. The 0.74 s flame exposure resulted in pain and light sun burns. The heat and mass transfer involved in this dangerous stunt have been analyzed in order to evaluate whether or not the thin water layer represented an important heat protection measure. It is estimated that the wetted person was exposed to heat fluxes in the range of 80–90 kW/m². Analytical solutions of the heat equation were used to evaluate water-spray pre-cooling, heating during flame exposure and post-flame relaxation of skin temperature gradients. It is shown that the water layer carried on the skin into the flames represented limited heat protection. The 30 s cold water-spray pre-cooling prior to the flame exposure was the most important heat protection mechanism. Larger flames of higher emissivity, longer period of flame exposure, warmer pre-cooling water or shorter pre-cooling period would most likely have resulted in severe skin burns.     

The reaction of a fire plume to a droplet spray

The reaction of a fire plume to an applied water spray is crucial to fire suppression. While considerable research has been devoted toward fire plumes without suppression, and some computer simulations of fire suppression have provided insight, little experimental data exist detailing how the structure of a fire plume changes during suppression. Experiments were performed in which 5, 15 and 50 kW gas burner fires were exposed to a spray from one of three spray sources. Flow rates from the nozzles or fire sprinkler ranged from 6 to 106 L/min. Contours of infrared (IR) intensity of the fire plume show that the plume decreases in height and increases in width with the increasing strength of the applied spray. Based on the height of the maximum fluctuations of IR intensity, the thermal plume height decreases with increasing spray strength, but the overall projected area of the plume changes very little. The plume height depends on the ratio of the drag of the droplets on the air to the momentum of the plume, allowing the results to be generalized to typical fire suppression applications.     

Experimental investigation on transverse ceiling flame length and temperature distribution of sidewall confined tunnel fire

This paper presents an experimental investigation on the transverse ceiling flame length and the temperature distribution of a sidewall confined tunnel fire. The experiments were conducted in a 1/6th scale model tunnel with the fire source placed against the sidewall, 0 m, 0.17 m and 0.35 m above the floor, respectively. Experiments of fire against a wall without a ceiling, 0.35 m above the floor in a large space, were also conducted as a control group. Results shows that for small heat release rate (HRR), the flame is lower than the ceiling and extends along the sidewall. With the increase of HRR and elevation of burner height, the flame gradually impinges on the ceiling and spreads out radially along it. The flame impingement condition and the flame shapes of the wall fire with and without ceiling are presented. From the viewpoint of the physical meaning of flame impinging on the ceiling, the horizontal flame length should be a function of the unburned part of the fuel at the impinging point. Based on the proportional relation between the flame volume and HRR, the effective HRR (Q_ef) at the ceiling is determined and the effective dimensionless HRR, Q^*_ef is defined to correlate the horizontal ceiling flame length. Additionally, predictive correlations of transverse ceiling temperature distribution are proposed for the continuous flame region, the intermittent flame region and the buoyant plume region under the ceiling, respectively.     

Automatic fire detection in road traffic tunnels

Fire detection experiments in a road traffic tunnel were performed in the Runehamar test tunnel 5th–8th March 2007. The Runehamar test tunnel is a full profile road traffic tunnel, 1.65 km long, located outside Åndalsnes, Norway. The goal was to examinate smoke and heat detection systems to determinate what kind of principle best suited for detecting a fire in an early stage. The systems were tested during small Heptane pool fires, varying between 0.16 m² and 1 m², giving heat release rates from 0.2 MW to 2.4 MW accordingly, and one car fire of about 3–5 MW, and with wind conditions varying from 1.1 m s^?1 to 1.6 m s^?1. The size of the fires, were designed to be in the range from impossible to difficult to detect. The results were conclusive. Earliest detection of a car fire, fire starts inside, was by smoke detection given fixed limits (3000 μg m^?3). With open pool fires, or immediate flames, continues fibre optical heat detection systems was faster given the limits 3 °C/4 min.     

Piloted ignition times,critical heat fluxes and mass loss rates at reduced oxygen atmospheres

Ignition, pyrolysis and burning of materials in reduced oxygen atmospheres occur when recirculating combustion gases are mixed with the air flowing into an enclosure. Still the incoming air can be sufficient for the complete combustion of the pyrolysis gases. Thus, for the prediction of fires in enclosures it is essential to understand the ignition and burning of materials in a reduced oxygen atmosphere even when plenty of oxidizer is available for complete combustion. Previous work employing gaseous fuels has shown that under these conditions, but before extinction, burning of gaseous fuels issuing from a nozzle is complete but radiation from the flames decreases owing to the reduction of their temperature. Complementary to that work, piloted ignition of solids is investigated here at reduced oxygen concentrations by measuring the ignition times and mass loss rates of the solid at ignition.These results were obtained in a cone calorimeter modified to supply air at reduced oxygen concentrations. Two types of plywood, normal and fire retardant 4 mm thick were examined at three imposed heat fluxes 25, 35 and 50 kW/m² and at oxygen concentrations of 21%, 18% and 15% by volume. Because heating at these heat fluxes and material thickness corresponds to intermediate thermal conditions (i.e. neither thin nor thick), novel analytical solutions are developed to analyze the data and extract the thermal and ignition properties of the material. The same novel solutions can be applied to modeling concurrent or countercurrent flame spread. Moreover, a theory for piloted ignition explains why the ignition times and mass pyrolysis rates are weakly dependent on reduced oxygen concentrations.     

Heat of combustion in spreading wood crib fires with application to ceiling jets

Responding to a challenge raised with respect to a 1989 revision of a 1979 paper on the ceiling jet of t-squared fires, we have measured the heat of combustion in the growth phase of wood cribs made of sugar pine, the test fuel in the original work, needed to generalize the ceiling jet measurements to any combustible. The present determination of the chemical heat of combustion in the growth phase, 14.1 kJ/g, is a little higher than adopted in 1989 (12.5 kJ/g, from wood sample burning with diffusion flame) but still considerably lower than employed in 1979 (20.9 kJ/g, from oxygen bomb calorimetry). More importantly, the convective heat of combustion was measured as 11.5 kJ/g, which has been employed to update the ceiling jet equations for temperature and velocity in t-squared fires. An explanation is offered for the varying, and often higher than expected ceiling-level temperatures measured with thermocouples directly over the fire in the original experiments, suggesting that both plume lean and thermocouple insertion depth may have affected the indicated temperature.     

Radiant smoldering ignition of plywood

This paper investigates the role of self-heating in the smoldering ignition of 18 mm (three-quarter inch) thick maple plywood exposed to radiant heat fluxes between 6 and 15 kW/m² in the cone calorimeter for up to 8 h. The minimum heat flux for smoldering ignition was experimentally determined to be 7.5 kW/m². This compares favorably to predictions made using classical self-heating theory. The role of self-heating was explored via temperature measurements distributed within the specimens. Elevated subsurface temperature profiles indicated self-heating was an important ignition factor resulting in ignition at depth with smolder propagation to the surface and into the material. The ignition depth was shown to be a function of the heat flux with the depth moving towards the surface as the heat flux increased.     

Temperature and velocity distributions from numerical simulations of ceiling jets under unconfined,inclined ceilings

Numerical simulations of ceiling jets under unconfined, inclined ceilings were conducted with the open-source code FireFOAM. A range of ceiling inclinations, 0–30° was considered with a 14 kW convective heat release rate (HRR) heptane fire used as the plume source, and the ceiling mid-point clearance from the top of the 0.228 m diameter burner kept fixed at 0.89 m. The predicted temperature and velocity in the developing ceiling jets were compared against the experimental data and empirical correlations. Temperature and velocity predictions on the elevated side of the ceiling are in general agreement with experimental data. Flow reversal in the lower side of the ceiling was predicted with good confidence, and comparison with experimental data was found to be reasonable. Following existing convention in the literature, the predicted results were non-dimensionalized using the convective HRR, ceiling height and radial distance from the ceiling mid-point. Comparison of the non-dimensional data on the elevated ceiling side showed better agreement for temperature against the correlation, whereas predicted velocity data showed a wider spread around the correlation values.     

Spectral radiation intensities of a turbulent buoyant ethylene flame: CFD-aided tomographic inversion

Radiation heat transfer has been found to dominate fire spread in large-scale fires. The radiation heat loss of buoyant turbulent fires is coupled with fluid mechanics, combustion processes, and soot/gas concentrations. Deconvolution of these combined phenomena can facilitate the development of combustion and radiation models for use in predictive fire modeling. Therefore, in this work, line-of-sight spectral radiation intensities have been measured from a buoyant turbulent pool-fire-like ethylene diffusion flame. In an attempt to be representative of practical turbulent fires, a burner of 15.2 cm in diameter was used. Temporal measurements of radiation intensity were obtained with a fast (400 Hz) mid-infrared spectrometer at a horizontal plane located at half a burner diameter above the burner. Measurement statistics, including mean, root mean square (RMS), probability density function (PDF) of line of sight intensity, and intermittency are reported herein for wavelengths dominated by soot and CO₂ radiation. The data show that radiation is affected by large-scale vortical motions, resulting in varying flame intermittency in the radial direction. Radial distributions of local scalar properties (temperature and soot volume fraction) were calculated through tomographic inversion, using measured data at multiple soot radiation wavelengths. The inversion technique was coupled with the results of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) fire simulation code. CFD results were used to construct PDFs and spatial correlations for the scalars of interest. The estimated scalars are shown to be consistent with values from the literature, and mean and RMS radiation intensities computed from these scalars are in good agreement with measurements.     

Smoke concentrations inside and outside of a corridor-like enclosure

This work presents smoke measurements and correlations inside and outside of a corridor-like enclosure fires in order to determine the effects of burning on smoke concentrations inside and outside the enclosure. Thirty eight experiments were performed in a three metre long corridor-like enclosure having a cross section 0.5 m×0.5 m, door like openings in the front panel and a gaseous burner located near the closed end. Smoke concentrations were measured at two locations inside the enclosure and also in the exhaust duct of a hood collecting the fire gases from the enclosure. It was found that smoke concentration in the exhaust duct decreased whereas smoke concentration inside the enclosure increased after the flames started moving towards the opening and external burning occurred. This increased smoke concentration inside the enclosure was caused by reversion of the flow pattern inside the enclosure after the flames moved past a point towards the opening. Namely, the flow pattern changed direction behind the flame front in the sense that hot gases in the upper layer were travelling backwards towards the closed end of the corridor thus contributing to smoke increase inside the enclosure. This change of flow pattern was confirmed in all experiments by bidirectional probe velocity measurements in the upper and lower layer as well as by oxygen concentrations and temperature measurements inside the enclosure. These results are useful for CFD validation and specifically applicable for assessing smoke hazards in corridor fires in buildings where smoke concentrations can be much larger than anticipated owing to leakage to adjacent rooms behind a moving flame front.     

Investigating coherent streaks in wildfires via heated plates in crosswind

Streaklike coherent structures are consistently observed in boundary layer flames, but their role in modifying heat and mass transfer remains unknown. In the following experiment, a non-reactive thermal plume was employed to study analogous streaks in an environment where the local source of buoyancy could be directly modified. A horizontal hot plate was exposed to crossflow, and infrared thermography was successfully employed to capture thermal traces of streaks on the surface. Post-processing of surface temperature data enabled the quantification of important properties of streaks, such as location, spacing, width, and strength. The distribution of streak spacing was found to have a lognormal distribution. Mean streak spacing and width increased with downstream distance, indicating the amplification and aggregation of coherent structures. Streak spacing decreased when either the hot plate temperature increased from 150 °C to 300 °C or the wind speed increased from 0.5 to 1.2 m/s. Streaks were seen to modify the spanwise distribution of heat transfer to the surface, most notably when the hot plate temperature was increased from 150 °C to 300 °C.     

Interaction between water spray and smoke in a fire event in a confined and mechanically ventilated enclosure

This work deals with the interaction between water droplet flows and smoke in a fire event in a confined and ventilated enclosure. The objective is to identify the specific effect of water spray in the specific environment of a confined and ventilated enclosure. The study is based on 17 large-scale fire tests performed in one room of 165 m³ ventilated at a renewal rate of 15.4 h⁻¹. The fire source is a propane gas burner with a heat release rate of between 140 and 290 kW. The water spray system consists of two Deluge nozzles with a nozzle coefficient of 26 l/min/bar^0.5. The test parameters are the fire heat release rate, the water flow rate, from 50 to 124 l/min, and the activation time. The study focuses on three topics, the interaction of the droplets with the smoke, the droplet evaporation process and the energy transferred to the droplets. The water spray significantly modifies the smoke stratification by mixing and cooling the gas phase. The rate of droplet evaporation has been determined from the water mass balance and is of the same order of magnitude as the rate of water vapor production by the combustion reaction. Heat transfer from the smoke to the droplets has been investigated using the energy balance equation. For a fire scenario in a confined and ventilated enclosure, the energy released by the fire is mainly transferred to the walls and extracted by the ventilation network. In the event of water spray activation, a significant share, up to 65%, is transferred to the droplet flows.     

Predicting the structural response of a compartment fire using full-field heat transfer measurements

Inverse heat transfer analysis (IHT) was used to measure the full-field heat fluxes on a small scale (0.9 m×0.9 m×0.9 m) stainless steel SS304 compartment exposed to a 100 kW diffusion flame. The measured heat fluxes were then used in a thermo-mechanical finite element model in Abaqus to predict the response of an aluminum 6061-T6 compartment to the same exposure. Coupled measurements of deflection and temperature using Thermographic Digital Image Correlation (TDIC) were obtained of an aluminum compartment tested until collapse. Two convective heat transfer coefficients, h =35 W/m²-K and h =10 W/m²-K were examined for the thermal model using the experimentally measured heat fluxes. Predictions of the thermal and structural response of the same compartment were generated by coupling Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) and Abaqus using the two values for h, h =35 W/m²-K and h from convection correlations. Predictions of deflection and temperature using heat fluxes from IHT and FDS with h=35 W/m²-K agreed with experimental measurements along the back wall. The temperature predictions from the IHT-Abaqus model were independent of h, whereas the temperature predictions from the FDS-Abaqus model were dependent on h.     

Numerical study of the behaviour of a surface fire propagating through a firebreak built in a Mediterranean shrub layer

The efficiency of a firebreak, built in a shrubland has been studied numerically using a multiphase physical model. The physical mechanisms governing the propagation of the surface fire and the consequences upon the temperature signal and the radiative heat flux received by a target located at 1 m above the ground level, have been firstly studied before positioning the firebreak. The role played by the flame and the recirculation of hot gases to the ignition of unburned fuel (especially the dry grass) ahead of the fire front have been clearly identified. Four values of the firebreak width L_C (ranged between 5 and 20 m) and 3 values of wind velocities (ranged between 1 and 8 m/s) have been tested. The simulations show that above a threshold value of this parameter, even if a small amount of the fuel located on the opposite side of the firebreak was ignited, the released energy was not sufficient to sustain the propagation of the surface fire after crossing the firebreak.     

Probabilistic aspect of fire whirl generation around an L-shaped fire source in a crosswind

Fire whirls can be generated during large outdoor fires such as post-earthquake urban fires, and their consequences are often devastating. Therefore, when assessing the post-earthquake fire risk in urban areas, the conditions of fire whirls generation must be understood. There have been attempts to determine the critical crosswind velocity that maximizes the occurrence of fire whirls. However, it does not account for the substantially varying frequency of fire whirl generation among different cases. From a fire-risk perspective, steadily generated fire whirls need to be distinguished from intermittently generated ones, but such a distinction has not been attempted to date. In this study, the probabilistic aspect of fire whirl generation around an L-shaped gas burner in a crosswind was experimentally investigated in a wind tunnel. The test parameters were the heat release rate per unit length (32.5–86.8 kW/m) and the crosswind velocity (0.115–0.696 m/s). Fire whirl was observed in 10 out of 19 cases, but the duration period (i.e., frequency) of the fire whirl generation varied substantially among the cases. The variation of the generation frequency was successfully generalized by the Froude number, Fr, a characteristic value of the counter-flow around the fire source. The Strouhal number, St, which is often used to characterize periodic pulsation of buoyant diffusion flames, was also found to be an appropriate value characterizing the coherency within the unsteady fire whirl generation phenomena.     

Pyrolysis and spontaneous ignition of wood under transient irradiation: Experiments and a-priori predictions

Wood is a material widely used in the built environment, but its flammability and response to fire are a disadvantage. Therefore, it is essential to have substantial knowledge of the behavior of wood undergoing external heating such as in a fire. The majority of studies in the literature use constant irradiation. Although this assumption simplifies both modelling and experimental endeavors, it is important to assess the behavior of materials under more comprehensive heating scenarios which might challenge the validity of solid-phase ignition criteria developed previously. These criteria are evaluated here for the spontaneous ignition under transient irradiation by combining experimental measurements and a-priori predictions from a model of heat transfer and pyrolysis. We have applied a two-step transient irradiation in the cone calorimeter in the form of a growth curve followed by constant irradiation. We use white spruce samples of size 100×100 mm and thickness of 38 mm . We measure the temperature at different depths and the mass loss. A one dimensional model written in the open source code Gpyro is used to predict the pyrolysis behavior. The model has a chemical scheme in which the components of wood (hemicellulose, cellulose, lignin) become active, then decompose in two competing reactions: one reaction to char and gas, and one reaction to tar. The kinetic parameters, as well as the thermal properties of the wood and char are taken from the literature, while ρ and moisture content are measured experimentally. A priori predictions of the temperature, made prior to the experiments, show excellent agreement with the measurements, being within the experimental uncertainty range. The mass loss rate (MLR) predictions are qualitatively similar to the measurements, but there is a large uncertainty in the measurements. For a-posteriori simulations, certain parameters are changed after having access to the measurements to improve the simulations. Also, we perform an evaluation of the solid phase ignition criteria used in the literature, and find that neither criteria is a consistent indicator of ignition. These results help understand the spontaneous ignition of wood subjected to transient irradiation and identify strengths and gaps in the topic.     

Extinguishing characteristics of a diffusion flame with water vapor produced from a water droplet impacting onto a heated plate

In this study, we have investigated an extinguishing method of a diffusion flame with water vapor produced from a water droplet impacting onto a headed plate, which is called as indirect fire attack. In order to clarify the extinguishing characteristics, the extinguishing experiments of a methane-air diffusion flame have been performed by using a pure water droplet with the diameter of 3.2 mm. The droplet dropped from the height of 400 mm. The wall superheat and the burner height were varied from 0 K to 330 K and from 32 mm to 102 mm, respectively. As a result, under certain wall-heat conditions, the water-vapor vortex ring is formed and visualized by the white water fog. At wall superheat of 150 K, the formation probability of the vortex ring is unity and the extinguishing probability always shows the peak values regardless of the burner height. As a result, it can be said in our study that the wall superheat of 150 K is the most effective value for the indirect extinguishing method.     

Enhanced ignition of biomass in presence of NOx

Accumulation of combustible biomass residues on hot surfaces of processing machineries can pose fire hazards. In addition, the presence of nitrogen oxides (NO_x) from plant equipment alters the local conditions, aggravating the propensity for low temperature ignition risks. This study presents an experimental study on a relative effect of NO_x on ignition temperature of morpholine, an important surrogate of biomass, to reveal the sensitising role of NO_x in ignition of biomass fuels and to gain mechanistic insights into the chemical aspect of this behaviour in fire. The experiments employed a flow-through tubular reactor, operated at constant pressure and residence time of 1.01 bar and 1.0 s, respectively, and coupled with a Fourier-transform infrared spectroscope. For a representative fuel-rich condition (Φ=1.25), the concentration of NO_x as small as 0.06% lowers the ignition temperature of morpholine by 150 °C, i.e., from approximately 500 °C to 350 °C. The density functional theory (DFT) calculations performed with the CBS-QB3 composite method, that comprises a complete basis set, characterised the dynamics and energies of the elementary nitration reactions. We related the observed reduction in ignition temperature to the formation of unstable nitrite and nitrate adducts, as the result of addition of NO_x species to morphyl and peroxyl radicals. Furthermore, the reaction of NO_x with low-temperature hydroperoxyl radical leads to the formation of active OH species that also propagate the ignition process. The present findings quantify the ignition behaviour of biomass under NO_x–doped atmospheres. The result is of great importance in practical applications, indicating that safe operation of wood-working plants requires avoiding trace concentration of NO_x within the vicinity of biomass residues. This can be facilitated by proper (and separate) venting of engine exhausts.