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Recent efforts to investigate car-park fires and understand the related mechanisms have fostered the need for analyses of suppression performance against this type of fire scenario. This work aims at providing an insight into the ability of sprinklers and water-mist systems to control and extinguish a fire within an enclosed car park through a series of real-scale experiments. Three cars were employed in each test: the central one was ignited by a heptane pool fire and the adjacent ones served as targets. Two configurations were explored: in the first one, a nozzle was placed directly at the vertical axis of the ignition source, whereas the ignition source was located between the area coverage of four nozzles in the second one. The sprinkler system mainly served as a reference; two values of discharge density were evaluated for water mist at high operative pressure and a biodegradable surfactant was also tested against the most challenging configuration. A quantitative analysis of free-burn and discharge phases by temperature measurements was coupled with radiant heat-flux measurements and an assessment of post-fire damage. Sprinkler and water-mist systems were capable of containing the fire spread and thermally controlling the fire, thus preventing structural damage. The water mist’s ability to overpower the plume and reach the burning surfaces proved more effective than that of sprinklers, especially as no nozzles were located right above the ignition surface. The higher discharge density showed better capability of preventing re-ignition phenomena and suppression was attained in both the investigated configurations, which suggests that a certain amount of flux is also needed to achieve flame cooling. The additive had promising impact on suppression performance; however, more tests are required to specifically explore its ability to enhance thermal control

An effective approach to ventilation of pitched roofs has been developed. It is aimed at mitigating summer overheating of inhabited rooms located immediately below the roof. The air flows in a ventilation layer made of parallel ducts and built between roof coverings and insulation, thus subtracting heat from the roof structure. It is then collected by a header and eventually discharged into the atmosphere by a extraction fan. The problem of obtaining a homogeneous flow distribution in the ventilation layer is solved by a very simple regulation mechanism, placed in the header and adjusted on site. The adjustment procedure is based on measurements of surface temperature distribution performed by an infrared camera.

A method has been proposed to reproduce in the laboratory experiments of infrared landmine detection with reduced length-and time-scale. In this work, the method is verified experimentally.Models of landmines are purposely built by a rapid prototyping technique. The surface response of the soil-landmine system is then monitored by an infrared camera. Preliminarily, the response measured above full-scale models is cross-checked against that measured above actual landmines. Full-scale and reduced-scale models are subsequently tested outdoors and in the laboratory, respectively. The measured distribution and time-evolution patterns of surface temperature are eventually compared, in order to assess the reliability of the scale reduction method.