Experimental investigation of fire behavior in a 1/6 scale dual opening compartment

Abstract

Compartment fire experiments were conducted using a reduced scale model to investigate the fire behavior in a single room with two openings—a door and a window. The concept of the equivalent opening height was introduced into this paper to discuss this dual opening (door and window) effect on the compartment fire behavior, comparing it with single opening compartment fires. The flame spread rate on the compartment floor, the mass burning rate of the solid fuel and the flashover time were strongly influenced by this dual opening effect. These results were investigated in terms of the equivalent opening height, Heq. The flame spread rate on the compartment floor could be well correlated with the square root of the equivalent opening height. The mass burning rate of the solid fuel in the post-flashover fire was discussed in terms of the equivalent ventilation parameter, ( ( A H ) e q ), derived from Heq, where A is the area of ventilation opening and H is its height. The burning rate in the dual opening compartment was lower than expected. Flashover time was minimum at about ( A H ) e q = 0.01 ( m 5 / 2 ) , but became longer than that in the single opening compartment. An oscillatory phenomenon was observed in the dual opening compartment as well as in the single opening compartment for floor fires. This oscillation was a symmetrical puffing in the dual opening compartment, but it could not be observed for wall fires.