Fire growth and spread - an experimental study in model-scale

Authors:

  • Walmerdahl Per
  • Werling Per

Publish date: 2003-01-01

Report number: FOI-R--0907--SE

Pages: 69

Written in: English

Abstract

An experimental study in model-scale has been performed to investigate compartment fire growth and fire spread between compartments. Initially a series of compartment fire growth tests were performed to study how different ignition sources will affect the time to flashover in a compartment with combustible linings. Further experiments were conducted to investigate both vertical and horisontal fire spread between compartments. Ventilation conditions were varied in order to resemble the situation onboard a ship or in an underground facility. A short evaluation of the compartment fire tests was done showing that flashover occurred at a relatively constant temperature of 650ºC and a level of incident heat radiation to the floor of about 17kW/m2. The mass loss rate of the combustible linings was also close to constant at 22g/s. Fire spread between compartments does not at first sight subject itself to an easy characterisation using gas temperatures as criteria for definition. The ventilation conditions seemed to have a great impact on the results. Future experimental studies should be aimed at further studying fire growth and spread between compartments and possibly making a comparative full-scale study. Comparisons between experimental data and CFD-model FDS and vulnerability assessment code AVAL are also of interest.