Submarine compartment fire study-fire performance evaluation of hull insulation

Abstract

Certain foam rubber materials which are currently used to insulate the interior of submarines are shown to possess a serious fire risk potential. Flame spread tests often do not adequately reflect the fire hazard potential of these materials.It is shown that compartment fire testing is the only satisfactory method of evaluating these kinds of materials at the present time.Fire barrier coatings for protecting these hull insulations are also investigated. Two candidate coatings are found to prevent full fire involvement of an insulated compartment following a moderately large flame exposure and at the same time meet the Navy's elasticity requirement for submarine application.The study includes comparisons of model and prototype compartment fire behavior and demonstrates the practicality of using quarter-scale fire tests for screening compartment finish materials.

Study on flashover in a single chamber lined with combustible materials

“…This is very close to the results of the experiments carried out by Lee et al . in full‐scale and 1/4 small‐scale adiabatic cabins of submarine, in which the critical temperature of smoke at the door opening was 324 °C when flashover occurred in cabins. They also thought that it should be more reliable to use the temperature at the door opening as the flashover criterion because the hot gases were well mixed before flowing out.…”

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

“…Furthermore, some materials which cannot sustain a flame can contribute significantly to the growth and intensity of a fire when they are exposed to an external flame. From our experience with material behavior in compartment fires [2,17] a flame exposure time of less than 60 seconds for the onset of fuel contribution from a material indicates that the material is likely to have a significant effect on fire growth. Of the materials listed in table 3 only the low density acoustical panel substitute, the acrylic carpet and the wool carpet substitute exhibited times to fuel contribution which were less than 60 seconds in the ease of ignition test.…”

“…Test data on ignition, flame spread, and heat release rate of typical shipboard materials are provided. 17 …”

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.…”

“…An accurate radiation model, accounting for the effect of surface radiation from the compartment walls and the radiative emission of the hot gas/particulate layer, is thus an important component of an effective zone model in the simulation of flashover. Radiative heat transfer in a multi-dimensional combustion medium, however, is a complex physical phenomenon which is difficult to 7 simulate numerically in an accurate and efficient manner. Historically, the lack of an accurate and computationally efficient simulation of radiative heat transfer is probably the primary factor limiting the effectiveness of many existing zone models in the analysis and prediction of flashover.…”