The effects of the thermal inertia of the walls upon flashover development

Experimental Study on the Burning Behavior of Pool Fires in Rooms with Different Wall Linings

“…The figure indicates that a linear correlation may be achieved, but as only two sets of data are available no definite conclusions are made based on the test data. Comparing the results found with findings in the literature the results generally compares well with the simulation made by Graham et al [13]. They show that lower thermal inertia will lead to lower onset temperatures for thermal runaway as well as their Figure 5 indicates that a linear correlation could be found between a dimensionless room temperature to the third power and a dimensionless thermal inertia of the lining materials.…”

“…These models also indicate that enhanced levels of the HRR as compared to the free burn values can be critical for the pre-flashover fire development. By isolating different parameters the models have listed the aspect ratio [12], the thermal inertia of lining [13,14] and the discharge coefficient [15] as parameters influencing the onset of flashover. Furthermore, the analyses generally mentioned that experimental validation was needed, which is in agreement with the fact that the CFD modeling in references [6,8,9] was unable to fully reproduce the results of the experimental tests.…”

Nonlinear dynamical model of compartment fire flashover

“…Several dynamical models have been proposed since, involving different numbers of state variables, namely one [6][7][8], two [9,10] or three [11,12]. For example, Beard [12] considered the system described by three parameters: viz.…”

“…This mechanism of positive nonlinear feedback makes the flashover phenomenon similar in many respects to the classical thermal explosion theory. This analogy has been exploited in a most consistent way by Graham et al [6,7]. Their model is formulated as a single-variable model, considering smoke-layer temperature as the only state variable.…”

“…Fire size [or related fire Heat Release Rate (HRR)] is considered as a static parameter in most models. The effect of fire area growth has either been neglected in existing models [6,7], or introduced in the form of highly empirical correlations [9] for initial flame spread. Neither of the models considers explicitly ignition that involves virgin fuel into fire during flashover.…”