Full Scale Experimental Studies on Liquid Fuel Fires in a Compartment

Mahesh Kumar Tiwari; Akhilesh Gupta; Ravi Kumar; Pavan Kumar Sharma

Authors

Mahesh Kumar Tiwari Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee-247667, Uttarakhand, India
Akhilesh Gupta Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee-247667, Uttarakhand, India
Ravi Kumar Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee-247667, Uttarakhand, India
Pavan Kumar Sharma Bhabha Atomic Research Center Trombay, Mumbai-400085, India

Keywords:

Compartment Fire, Heat Release Rate, Thermal Discontinuity, Large Scale Heat Release Cone Calorimeter

Abstract

The compartment fires have been studied through full-scale experiment, which were conducted in a compartment of size 4m x 4m x 4m with a door of size 2m (height) x 1m (width). Three experiments were performed with same size of fire using three different types of fuel. The fuel pan of 0.8 m diameter and 0.12 deep was placed in a center of compartment. The steady heat release rates measured were approx. 800 kW, 700 kW and 260 kW for Exp. 1, Exp. 2 and Exp. 3 respectively. The local and average hot gas temperatures were measured to observed severity of fuel types. The average hot gas temperature in Exp. 1, Exp. 2 and Exp. 3 were found 400 °C, 280 °C and 160 °C respectively. The mean flame height as obtained by image processing was compared with the predicted correlation for using three fuels. Experimental diesel flame height is found to be 79.5% and 73.5% underneath than the Heskestad and Thomas correlation respectively