Abstract
The apartment fire tests comprise a set of two full-scale fire experiments in a dwelling building made from pre-fabricated concrete elements in April 2013. Two apartments were nearly identically furnished and fully instrumented with thermocouples, video cameras and gas extraction probes. The apartments were ignited successively whereupon the fire in the second apartment developed freely to post-flashover conditions and got the main focus in this report. The apartment was completely furnished with contemporary furniture and objects, and had an average fire load density for residential occupancy. A full description of the fire load, ventilation conditions and instrumentation are provided. The focus of this report is primarily to obtain conclusions on the horizontal spread of smoke throughout the apartment during the fire growth period. Velocities of smoke spreading were measured to be in the range below 0.05 m/s which means that the smoke migrated over the longest distance throughout the apartment for about 3 to 4 minutes while the flame did not leave the initial fire room. The main aim of the experiments was to collect a comprehensive set of data from a realistic and contemporary fire scenario to validate numerical simulations.
Highlights
The current safety architecture of the German fire brigades nowadays is based in part on fire tests from the year 1939 [1] yet
The apartment fire tests comprise a set of two full-scale fire experiments in a dwelling building made from pre-fabricated concrete elements in April 2013
The focus was on a set of furniture, electric appliances and materials which corresponded to modern apartment fires and allowed conclusions on a horizontal spread of fire and smoke spreading in such apartments
Summary
The current safety architecture of the German fire brigades nowadays is based in part on fire tests from the year 1939 [1] yet. The smoke spread between rooms of a dwelling is not considered there. In [1] Robert and Ingbergexamined smoke spread in a furnished room. The fire load consisted of materials typical at that time such as wood and paper. Modern materials, as they are to be found in today’s dwellings, were not considered thereby. Characterizing smoke migration, especially in terms of location of the smoke layer and the velocity of its spread from the room of the initial fire to the adjacent rooms, should allow an improved assessment of time windows available for self-rescuing. The focus was on a set of furniture, electric appliances and materials which corresponded to modern apartment fires and allowed conclusions on a horizontal spread of fire and smoke spreading in such apartments. The present report is focused more on the second fire test
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