Experimental study on Jet-A pool fire at high altitude

Abstract

For the further assessment on cargo fire hazard, full-scale Jet-A pool fire tests under the specifications of FAA Minimum performance standard (MPS) were conducted in sea-level Hefei and high-altitude Lhasa. A square insulation board (1.2m×1.2m) was place upon the fuel pan to simulate the effect of ceiling on fire plume. The experimental results indicates that the mass burning rate is proportional to the 2/3 power of the ambient pressure, in accordance with the theoretical prediction for convection-dominant fires. The analysis shows that the flame height increases slightly at high altitude. At higher altitude, the centerline temperature decreases in the flame region but increases in the intermittent region. The addition of ceiling increases the mass burning rate and the centerline temperature, although the effect on centerline temperature is observed to be weaker in Lhasa. KEYWORDS:

Experimental investigation on RP‐3 aviation kerosene large‐scale pool fires at high altitude

“…The parameters of 0.058 kg/m 2 s and 0.65 were obtained. This is close to the burning rate ratio of 0.74 that was obtained in the experiment by Zhou et al 32 where Jet-A aviation kerosene was used at Lhasa (3650 m, 65.2 kPa) and Hefei (20 m, 101 kPa). The decrease in burning rate will further affect parameters including air entrainment, flame shape, flame and smoke temperature, flame radiation and smoke density, making the combustion law of liquid fuel at high altitudes quite different to that at sea level.…”

“…The fitting index of the radiation model is 0.587. Small‐scale oil pools were used in the previous oil pool fire experiment in a low‐pressure environment 32,34,35 . These small‐scale oil pool fire experiments produced less smoke and uncontrolled thermal radiation combustion.…”

Experimental study on combustion characteristics of blended fuel pool fires

“…The actual burning rate during a pool fire varies; thus, researchers usually choose a relative steady state that is close to the peak burning rate, called the quasi-steady stage, in pool fire studies. 33–35 Therefore, the quasi-steady stage in our study is shown in Figure 8. The averaged actual burning rates with an error of 2%–5% at the quasi-steady stage in all cases are also shown in Figure 8, and the transformed burning rate data m · is also listed in Table 4.…”