Abstract
This study presents a new wireless measurement system for outdoor fire experiments based on an OCARI wireless sensor network (WSN). The open-source radio communication OCARI stack (‘Open Communication Protocol for Ad Hoc Reliable Industrial Instrumentation’) allows to overcome the limitations of the previous wireless solutions for fire measurements, especially those based on proprietary systems, such as Zigbee, wherein users cannot control energy consumption and timestamping. This paper presents the design of an Atmel/ARM-based platform compatible with the wireless OCARI stack, adapted to record and communicate data from heat transducers—namely, a K-type thermocouple and heat fluxmeter. A 5-node WSN using heat sensors faces a 10 m natural fire of excelsior (pine wood) in outdoor conditions. Measurements from the OCARI-WSN were compared with the same measurements simultaneously recorded on a datalogger, a standard wired solution in fire science. Thus, six fire experiments were performed for different fuel loads, and the incident heat radiation varies with the fire size under variable wind conditions. The technological breakdown of timestamping identified in previous low-energy consumption and low-cost wireless systems is overcome by the present solution.
Highlights
Large-scale measurements are indispensable prerequisites aimed at improving and validating physics-based models of natural gas confined fires
The present study evaluates the ability of an OCARI-based wireless sensor network (WSN) to break the limitations observed with a Zigbee-based WSN for heat measurements during fire experiments, especially in terms of data timestamping
We compared signals gained by a wired datalogger and OCARI-based WSN
Summary
Large-scale measurements are indispensable prerequisites aimed at improving and validating physics-based models of natural gas confined fires. It is difficult to set and display the fire metrology on a field scale, owing to the financial costs for installing devices over large areas and to maintain the metrological integrity facing large-scale fires. In this framework, measurement systems including transducers, datalogger, and their wires for large-scale fire experiments may benefit from the use of wireless sensor network systems (WSNs) [5].
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