The fire environment in a multi-room building— comparison of predicted and experimental results

This paper outlines results from a research project which is being used to investigate realistic fire environments in a prototype multi-room building. A comprehensive set of experimental data was obtained from a recently constructed three-storey Experimental Building-Fire Facility. The facility is used for a variety of fire investigation purposes, including fire growth and spread, smoke movement, and the effects of stair pressurisation and extinguishment. For the current investigation, a propane burner was located in the centre of a burn room to simulate a fire under both steady-state and transient-state conditions. The burn room was connected to other rooms. A comprehensive set of temperature, radiation and flow velocity measurements was obtained.

The numerical results obtained from a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model were found to agree well with the experimental results. The CFD model results were also found to agree well with zone model predictions. These results encourage use of the CFD model to research the phenomena of realistic fire growth and spread and smoke movement in prototype building layouts.