Effect of Lateral Airflow on Initial HSI and Flame Behavior of Marine Fuel in a Ship Engine Room: Experiment and Analysis

Abstract

The flame behavior of engine fires, such as those caused by leaked fuel coming into contact with an ignition source, is significant in practical applications, where flame detection is used to minimize the damage of the attendant ship fire safety problem. In this work, the flame behavior of hot-surface ignition (HSI) under crossflow was studied, with a particular focus on the difference in lateral airflow velocities for HSI-driven flame deviations at the windward and leeward sides of a ship engine room; a problem such as this has not previously been quantified. Full-scale experiments were conducted in a ship engine room using marine diesel and hydraulic oil as the fuel, and by adopting lateral airflow with the velocities of 0 m/s, 1.0 m/s, 3.0 m/s, and 5.0 m/s, together with an HSI mechanism consisting of marine diesel and hydraulic oil coming into contact with elevated hot-surface temperatures. The results show that the effects of disturbing the combustible gaseous mixture for marine fuel HSI, at both the windward and leeward sides, strengthened as the airflow velocity increased. The HSI position of the leaked marine fuel in the engine room was strongly dependent on ventilation, while that under the airflow condition decreased with the increase in the hot-surface temperature. A model was proposed to characterize this difference on the basis of the HSI height, which was defined as the ratio of the height during the initial HSI to the stationary period. The results indicate that the scale of the flame gradually increased in the horizontal direction, which was significantly different from the result in the scenario without mechanical ventilation. The results also revealed that the fluctuation of hydraulic oil through the temperature field was significant and lasted for a long time under a low HSI temperature.