Experimental investigation on the influence of annular pool shape characteristics on n‐heptane ring fires

Abstract

SummaryThe ring fire usually originates from the combustion of the annular‐distributed fuel, and it may occur in the low‐temperature environments such as the Arctic area and plateau area, which is kind of different from the conventional environment. In this paper, the annular pools with various shape characteristics were designed. The outside diameter ranged from 14.9 to 30.0 cm, the inside diameter increased from 0 to 24.5 cm, and the diameter ratio was from 0 to 0.858. A series of n‐heptane ring fire experiments were carried out. The results showed that for the annular pools with the same outside diameter, the mass loss rate (MLR) per unit area presents a piecewise trend with the diameter ratio. When the diameter ratio increases from 0 to 0.7, the MLR per unit area increases linearly because of the domination of air entrainment effect. When the diameter ratio is larger than 0.7, the MLR per unit area is independent of the annular shape due to the strong heat dissipation effect. Finally, a parameter named the outside circumference per unit area is put forward to characterize the annular pool. A corrected pressure modeling is established to normalize the ring fire with various shape characteristics.