Experimental study of oil pool shape and environment pressure on the wall fire behavior in an airplane cargo compartment

Abstract

A series of pool fires were carried out to study the effect of pool shape and environment pressure on the wall fire behavior. Four sizes of annular pool and three sizes of rectangle pool were used as the oil container. The results showed that the burning rate of both the annular and rectangle pool fire increased with increasing length ratio of the poolside, which was defined as the ratio of the inside and outside diameter for the annular pool (η) and aspect ratio (n) for rectangle pool. At the stable burning stage, the pool burning rate increased with the environmental pressure. While the flame height was not a monotonous trend with the pressure for rectangle pool fire, and the flame height in two kinds of pools exhibited opposite tendencies as the length ratio was increased. In addition, by introducing the shape parameter of the pool into the classical model, correlations to calculate the mass burning rate and the height of the pool fire flame under the limited sidewall conditions at different pressure environments were established.