Reduced-Scale Experiments on the Water Suppression of a Rack-Storage Commodity Fire for Calibration of a CFD Fire Model.
Reduced-Scale Experiments on the Water Suppression of a
Rack-Storage Commodity Fire for Calibration of a CFD
Fire Model.
(850 K)
Hamins, A.; McGrattan, K. B.
Fire Safety Science. Proceedings. Seventh (7th)
International Symposium. International Association for
Fire Safety Science (IAFSS). June 16-21, 2003,
Worcester, MA, Intl. Assoc. for Fire Safety Science,
Boston, MA, Evans, D. D., Editor(s), 457-468 pp, 2003.
Keywords:
fire research; sprinklers; pallet storage; experiments;
water; computational fluid dynamics; fire models; fire
suppression; equations; ignition; heat release rate
Abstract:
The objective of this work was to provide measurements
from reduced-scale experiments for use in the NIST Fire
Dynamics Simulator, a computational fluid dynamics model
that calculates fire growth, spread, sprinkler
activation, and water suppression of rack-storage
commodity fires. The model requires implementable
sub-grid algorithms and corresponding data that
adequately represent the full-scale heat and mass
transfer that occurs in a warehouse fire with
rack-storage of a standard commodity. This paper
describes experiments that investigated the effect of
water application on the time to ignition and the heat
release rate of the Group A Plastic Commodity. Several
types of experiments were conducted including
small-scale ignition measurements using the LIFT device
and the cone calorimeter, and moderate-scale heat
release rate measurements using oxygen consumption
calorimetry. Both ignition and heat release rate
measurements were made with and without water
application. The results showed that the heat release
rate is adequately described as a function of the water
application rate in a form suitable for implementation
in a CFD fire model.
Building and Fire Research Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899