Smoldering Combustion of Hexagonal Incense Material with Forced Airflow

Abstract

Most of the forest fires and building fires are occurring due to the low-temperature flame-less phenomenon called smoldering combustion. The present study is carried for the understanding of fluid flow patterns over the fuel and also fuel under smoldering combustion. The fuel equipped here is a hexagon since most of the modern architectural shapes for buildings, parking lots, hexagon-shaped houses, honeycomb-patterned facades, etc. Regression rates are calculated for the fuel under smoldering. For experimentation, a tabletop wind tunnel is fabricated, and an axial fan is fixed with a speed regulator to investigate the smoldering combustion under the flow and behavior of the fluid flow. The results suggest that the smoldering phenomenon is significantly dependent on the orientation, flow speed and the direction of smoldering with respect to the flow.