Experimental investigation and numerical simulation of a furnished office fire

Experiments were conducted in a full-scale model room equipped with both movable and fixed fire loads to explore fire growth and spread via heat release rates, indoor air temperature and species concentration. The room space is a brick structure that measures 5.7 m in interior length, 4.7 m in width and 2.4 m in ceiling height. The northeast and southeast corners each feature a 2.1 m × 0.9 m open doorway. Numerical simulations with parameter adaptation were carried out using FDS software to predict the fire features and were compared with the experimental results. In this study, the material properties and oxygen limit settings in the FDS software were tested to explore their influence on the tendency of heat release rate and on the total amount of heat release. The results show that the heat release rate from the FDS simulations is comparable to the full-scale experiment results during the fire growth period. Temperature profile near ceiling can be modeled well. In the full-involvement burning and decaying periods, the qualitative trends were identical, although the simulated value differed greatly from the experimental result.