Heat Fluxes and Flame Lengths from Fires Under Ceilings

Lattimer, Brian Y.; Mealy, Christopher; Beitel, Jesse J.

doi:10.1007/s10694-012-0261-1

Cited by 49 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…In this instance the cone calorimeter data for Pink insulation correlates with a lower critical heat flux and ignition temperature when compared to Yellow insula- [12,15,16], burning ceilings [17], and at the ceiling of modular steel sheds when subject to burning wood pallets [18]. The difference in HRR behaviour for the Pink insulation was relatively minor when comparing the 25 kW/m 2 and 35 kW/m 2 ; however, the heat release behaviour of the Yellow insulation exhibited a larger difference between these exposure conditions.…”

Section: Iso 9705 Room Fire Testmentioning

confidence: 85%

Case Study and Computational Modelling of the Impact of Fire Retardant on Fire Spread for Metal Building Insulation

2016

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Abstract. This paper reviews a large fire loss that occurred at a seasonally operated Canadian food-processing facility. The fire occurred when the facility was not in production and started near a work area where employees had been previously unloading a trailer. The origin and cause investigation revealed different metal building insulation (MBI) products were used throughout the building on walls and ceilings. It was suspected that MBI material contributed to the rapid fire spread to otherwise empty parts of the building and that this material did not meet the relevant Building Code requirements. The facility used MBI product consisting of a polypropylene moisture barrier over fiberglass insulation. A detailed analysis of recovered MBI materials found that some of the material was flame retardant and some was not flame retardant. Additional testing of the materials was used to calibrate computational fire model inputs in order to estimate the behavior of MBI coatings by simulating fire scenarios in the full building. The intent of the analysis was to evaluate the relative propensity of the two MBI insulation products to facilitate flame spread from the area of fire origin in a comparative, qualitative framework. Test results showed that flame retardant MBI material substantially reduced fire spread compared with the non-flame retardant material. The ignition temperatures derived from cone calorimeter testing were higher (407°C compared with 226°C) and the peak heat release per unit area was lower for the flame retardant MBI coatings. The non-flame retardant MBI had a measured flame spread rating of 120, which was greater than the maximum flame spread rating of 25 permitted by the Building Code for ceiling finishes. Computational modeling correlates with non-flame retardant coated insulation (noncompliant) being present in the area where the fire originated, facilitating significant fire spread. The model predicted that the presence of non-flame retardant MBI on the ceiling facilitated flame spread across a significant distance from the area of origin within the first 300 s to 400 s, while the flame retardant MBI product yielded minimal flame spread beyond the incident area over a 20 min exposure.

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Section: Iso 9705 Room Fire Testmentioning

confidence: 85%

Case Study and Computational Modelling of the Impact of Fire Retardant on Fire Spread for Metal Building Insulation

2016

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“…In the previous studies [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], there were several correlations proposed for the flame lengths beneath an un-confined horizontal ceiling induced by free fire impingement, which were either expressed as ). Figure 7 shows that the data for various inclination angles can be well correlated, [11] as well as the correlations proposed in [6,9] for free fire impingement without the effect of the wall for horizontal ceiling; and (b) for all inclination angles.…”

Section: Analysis and Correlationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The impinging flame length in ceiling jet is an important parameter [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] to estimate the direct heat flux upon the ceiling and the radiation to flammable objects below the ceiling. The earliest experiments to measure the impinging flame lengths was done by You and Faeth [3] for unconfined horizontal ceiling using axi-symmetric sources (0.36-7.89 kW).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Experimental study and analysis on flame lengths induced by wall-attached fire impinging upon an inclined ceiling

Zhang

Delichatsios

et al. 2019

Proceedings of the Combustion Institute

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Experiments were conducted to investigate the flame lengths induced by a wall-attached fire impinging upon an inclined ceiling, which has not been quantified previously. The flame lengths beneath the ceiling were measured in the directions both normal-(x direction) and parallel (y direction) to the intersection line of the wall and ceiling for 576 experimental conditions, involving various heat release rates, source-ceiling heights and ceiling inclination angles (from-20° to 20°). The measured values were found to be essentially different from previous data and correlations for fire impingement without wall, and at the same time, have a complex variation nature with inclination angle. The flame lengths in the x direction increased, whereas that in the y direction decreased with increasing of the ceiling inclination angle. The measured flame lengths were then analyzed regarding the buoyancy effect (gravitational component along the ceiling) in two aspects: one is due to the change of the impinged flow velocity field distribution over the ceiling and the other is due to the formation of corner vortex rotating flow. The flame lengths in either direction normalized by the ceiling height (H) was found to be proportional to (H wall,f-H)/H (reflects the fraction of the unburned fuel after impingement) where H wall,f is the free flame height for the wall-attached fire. The effect of the angle was then further accounted for by multiplying (H wall,f-H)/H with (1+sinT)/2 for the flame lengths in the x-direction, and dividing (H wall,f-H)/H by (1+sinT)/2 for the flame lengths in the y-direction. New models were finally obtained to correlate the impinging flame lengths in the two directions. This study provides quantitative data and basic understanding of the flame length beneath an inclined ceiling induced by wall-attached fire impingement, which has a ceiling flow structure essentially different from other impinging configurations reported previously.

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“…The data in [4] was further correlated non-dimensionally [5] using source-ceiling height H for normalization rather than source dimension D. Ding and Quintiere [6] also proposed another non-dimensional correlation based on a theoretical analysis to predict the flame extension length beneath the ceiling using source dimension D for normalization:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flame extension lengths beneath a confined ceiling induced by fire in a channel with longitudinal air flow

Qiu

Chen

et al. 2018

Fire Safety Journal

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This paper investigates the length of flame extension for an impinging flame underneath the confined ceiling in a channel with longitudinal air flow. Previous works in this field have been primarily concerned with un-confined ceilings and no forced air flow conditions. Under longitudinal air flow conditions, the flame extension beneath the channel ceiling is non-symmetrical, that is, different in the upstream and downstream directions from the fire source. In this study, experiments were carried out with two channeled ceilings with widths of 1.5 m and 0.5 m. Square porous gas burners of different sizes were employed as the fire source, using propane as fuel, with various heat release rates and

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Heat Fluxes and Flame Lengths from Fires Under Ceilings

Cited by 49 publications

References 9 publications

Case Study and Computational Modelling of the Impact of Fire Retardant on Fire Spread for Metal Building Insulation

Case Study and Computational Modelling of the Impact of Fire Retardant on Fire Spread for Metal Building Insulation

Experimental study and analysis on flame lengths induced by wall-attached fire impinging upon an inclined ceiling

Flame extension lengths beneath a confined ceiling induced by fire in a channel with longitudinal air flow

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