Fire development in residential basement rooms

Abstract

A multi-phase study program has been established to develop a rational test procedure for evaluating the fire resistance of residential floor assemblies.The first phase of this research program was aimed at characterizing the severity of fires originating in residential rooms and developing a specified set of fire exposure conditions applicable for fire resistance testing of floor constructions.A total of 16 burnout tests were conducted to investigate the fire behavior in typical residential recreation rooms of single family houses. These fire tests were usually run for one hour and were performed in two instrumented test rooms, 3.3 x 3.3 x 2.4 m and 3.3 x 4.9 x 2.4 m in width, length, and height respectively, furnished with household furniture and lined with interior finish materials typical of actual occupancies. Measurements were made of the temperature, heat flux, static pressure, smoke density, gas velocity, species concentration, and oxygen consumption.The effects of such parameters as the ventilation, fire load density, initial item ignited, room size, and thermal and flammable properties of the wall and ceiling materials on the fire severity were evaluated quantitatively. A fire exposure temperature-time curve which is different from the ASTM E 119 curve, has been developedfor testing the fire resistance of such building structures.

Unprotected Floor Assemblies and Tenability Conditions in a Test House Under Two Basement Fire Scenarios

“…The rate of fire growth for FS-1 and FS-4 in the early development stage agrees well with the test results from full-scale tests conducted by National Bureau of Standards [10] and the University of Canterbury [11] using residential living room settings.…”

An experimental data set for the accuracy assessment of room fire models

“…Table 8 presents average mass flows through the doorways during the main burn period (from main burner ignition to main burner extinguishment). [19] q(N) …”

“…Height of hot / cold layer interface in third room estimated from temperature profiles in third room 74 Figure 19.…”

Approximate Analytical Solutions For The Transient Mass Loss Rate And Piloted Ignition Time Of A Radiatively Heated Solid In The High Heat Flux Limit

“…Although most fire-level heat fluxes are lower than 75 kW/m 2 , with the notable exceptions of post-flashover burning [3] and some cases of direct flame impingement [4], there are several situations of practical interest where applied heat flux levels may be greater than 75 kW/m 2 . Starting in the 1950's, the ignition of cellulosic materials heated by intense short duration thermal radiation characteristic of thermonuclear detonations was studied extensively, as recently summarized by Martin [5].…”