Effects of wind, buoyancy and thermal expansion on a room fire with natural ventilation

Abstract

Effects of wind, buoyancy and thermal expansion on a room fire with natural ventilation provision were studied in this paper. The room was taken as a single zone of uniform temperature with two openings. A dimensionless system function derived from conservation of enthalpy was analysed and solved under different heat release rates. Air flow patterns of each scenario were also determined. Three steady air flow modes can be identified for fires of different heat release rates. At low heat release rates, the thermal expansion effect can be neglected. At medium heat release rates, the effects of all three factors should be taken into consideration. At high heat release rates, buoyancy effect can be neglected under strong wind. There are no specific experimental studies on the associated work due to resource limitation. However, results in this paper are compared with analytical expressions reported earlier without thermal expansion in the literature.