Investigation on the restrain effect of air curtain to the spilled flame and its heat flux of a compartment-facade fire

Abstract

This paper investigates the restrain effect of air curtain to the spilled flame and its heat flux of a compartment-facade fire. A compartment model of 1.2 m × 0.9 m × 0.9 m is established in this study, and an air curtain is facilized at the compartment opening for fire protection. The air curtain jet velocity, the heat release rate as well as the opening dimension are changed as representative to typical fire scenarios. Flame behavior and heat flux profile of spill plume are captured by CCD cameras and water-cooled heat flux gauge for discussion. Results show that the air curtain jet could have a substantial impact on the flame behavior of spilled plumes from a compartment-facade fire. Compared to that of free condition without air curtain, the flame height becomes 20 % lower as the jet velocity to be 2 m/s, while it becomes 60 % lower as the jet velocity to be 5 m/s. At the meantime, the spilled plume is noticeably influenced by the “restricting effect” of the air curtain and thus flame trajectory is significantly flattened by the inertia force of the air curtain but also pushed farther from the facade wall, resulting in an increasing of flame depth. The decreasing in flame height plus the increasing flame depth would result in the reduction of heat flux intensity upon the facade wall, which is helpful for the fire protection of the facade wall. Then, a normalized factor of Υ is further proposed to the new correlation of flame height under various air curtain jet conditions at the opening. Regarding to different ejected flame behavior at the presence of air curtain jet, the heat flux upon the facade wall is quantitative analyzed to evaluate the thermal impact of spilled plume from the compartment fire. Finally, new correlations of the vertical heat flux upon the facade wall could be well achieved by a function of normalized height factor Z/Zf, v.