Experimental study on vertical temperature of facade fire plume ejected from compartment constrained by adjacent single sidewall

Abstract

This article presents an experimental investigation about the effect of adjacent single sidewall on temperature profile of window-ejected facade fire plume from a fire compartment. The experiments were conducted using a reduced-scale compartment with a sidewall, and the temperature profile in vertical direction of facade fire plume was recorded for various window dimensions, sidewall distances and heat release rates for a total of 70 test conditions. The experimental results show that the vertical temperature can be divided into three regions, and as vertical height Z-Zn-Z0 increases, the temperature in vertical direction keeps stable at continuous flame region, while decreases rapidly at intermittent flame- and buoyancy plume regions constrained by single sidewall as exhibiting the characteristic (Z-Zn-Z0)−1 and (Z-Zn-Z0)−5/3 variations for the two regions. As the distance between sidewall and window decreases, the flame height increases which results in an increase of the temperature at intermittent flame- and buoyancy plume regions. The facade fire plume entrainment flow field was analyzed through the CFD simulation. As the decreasing of the distance between sidewall and window, the air entrainment at the side of the single sidewall is limited, which increases the flame height. A correction factor as a function of sidewall distance as well as the vertical height was proposed to characterize the effect of sidewall on facade fire plume temperature of various conditions, and the dimensionless temperature was well correlated correspondingly. This paper reveals the effect of building sidewall structure on facade fire plume temperature and provides new data and correlation of temperature on facade of high-rise buildings.