Experiment Study of Cardboard Box Fire Behavior Under Dynamic Pressure in an Altitude Chamber

Abstract

Fires recently at low ambient pressure such as cruising airplane and high altitude airport have attracted great attention. Understanding fire behavior under low pressure is one of important fundamental problems for fire safety engineering design in forementioned environment. Observation of cardboard fires under dynamic pressure is of significant meaning to study continuous variation of fire behaviors of solid fuel during depressurization. An altitude chamber of 2×3×4.65 m3 with a powerful pressure controlling system was designed to observe fire behavior of cardboard fires under dynamic pressure. In the chamber, two configurations of cardboard boxes filled with shredded office paper were tested under dynamic pressures at descent rates: 5.46kPa/min, 10.92kPa/min, and 19.68kPa/min for both configurations. Measured parameters in this study include flame temperature, radiative heat flux, and mass burning rate. The measurement data were analyzed to reveal depressurization effect on fire behavior.