Numerical and experimental study of cedar façade fire

Abstract

SummaryThis article presents a large eddy simulation and experimental study of cedar façade behavior exposed to a 900 kW window spilled flame. The experiments used for validation were carried out in the Building Research of Institute of Japan in Tsukuba according to JIS A 1310 method. The compartment fire was modeled by using the modified eddy dissipation model with a diffusion mixing time scale for the near wall laminar region of combustion model, oneEqEddy model of turbulence model, pyrolysis chemistry mode of pyrolysis model, and finite volume discrete ordinates method of radiation model. The fire flame is treated as optically thin, and a fixed radiant fraction 0.35 is used to calculate the radiation source term. The pyrolysis model of cedar was modeled and optimized according to the results of fire propagation apparatus test. The influence of cedar parameters on time‐to‐pHRR (peak HRR), pHRR, and (total heat release rate) THR curves of facade fire were clarified by a series of simulation varying from thermal density, conductivity, heat capacity, and pyrolysis reaction parameters. It indicates the simulation results show a reasonable good quantitative agreement with experimental measurements. The activation energy of cedar pyrolysis shows a great influence on the time‐to‐pHRR, low pHRR, and THR of cedar facade.