Experimental and numerical study of high-pressure water-mist nozzle sprays

Abstract

The performance of extinguishment of fires by water sprays is strongly influenced by the characteristics of the sprays produced by nozzles. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based fire models are a tool that can be used for the characterization of sprays. However, it is necessary to evaluate the capability of a CFD based fire model in predicting the behaviour of sprays before using it for such characterization. One of the basic parameters that is important in characterising the water mist spray is the distribution of flux density of water droplets impinging on the floor. This paper reports the study on the characterization of water mists, in terms of distribution of flux density of sprays, produced by a single and a multi-orifice high-pressure jet nozzle. Full-scale experiments were conducted and the distributions of volume flux density of sprays were measured. The sprays were also modelled using a CFD model, Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS), version 6, to investigate the capability of the model in predicting the distribution behaviour of the spray. The numerical results of distribution are compared with those obtained experimentally. The predicted results of FDS has show good agreement with the experimental results.