Measurements of the behavior of incidental fires in a compartment

Abstract

A variety of upholstered chairs and wood cribs were burned within a ventilated compartment. The experimental measurements of weight loss, smoke concentration, temperature and heat flux levels are summarized. A reproducible fire obtained from burning a standardized wood crib array was found to be capable of representing the essential features of incidental fires of moderate intensity.

Fire buildup in shipboard compartments - characterization of some vulnerable spaces and the status of prediction analysis

“…The upholstered chairs used in the experiments by Fang [5] had burning rates as high as 25 g/s (3.3 Ib/min) . The burning rates for the couches used by Waterman [6] ranged from 19 to 90 g/s (2.5 to 11.…”

“…The latter, which is described in section A. 5, was designed for the evaluation of carpeting or other flooring materials in corridors. Generally, the flooring materials do not become involved in a room fire until flashover is imminent.…”

The role of thermal radiation on the initiation of flashover in a compartment fire

“…For example, three criteria were commonly accepted by the fire safety community as conditions for flashover. reported by different studies [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], there is little understanding of the fundamental basis of these criteria especially the first two, as both appeared to be related more on heat transfer than combustion. For example, it is not clear that whether one or both of these two criteria are required for the onset of flashover.…”

“…Even with the increased computational power 6 available in recent years, the zone model remained the preferred approach (over a direct numerical simulation based on solution to the relevant field equations) in the study of flashover because of the difficulty in modeling the complex combustion physics in a full solution of the field equations. While the zone model cannot predict localized spatial behavior of field variables such as temperature, mass concentration of various species and velocity, the model is generally expected to be sufficiently good in illustrating the key mechanisms leading to flashover, provided that all relevant physical processes are simulated with sufficient accuracy.…”

Fire buildup in a room and the role of interior finish materials

“…In order to compare the flame spread characteristics of various lining materials, corner fire tests have been used to serve as an evaluation tool [2,3] and to demonstrate residential fire hazards [4] Previous experimental studies have provided information on the fire environment produced by various combustible contents of wastebaskets and individual pieces of upholstered furniture [5,6], and on the development of standardized wood cribs to simulate reproducibly similar levels of low intensi fires in rooms [6,7]. A recent study on reduced scale modeling [8] represents an encouraging approach to the determination of the fire hazards of compound finish materials on walls and ceiling.…”