Response to another look at “2019 energy benchmarking data for LEED-certified buildings in Washington, D.C.: Simulation and reality”

Abstract

Building fire occurs frequently in the vertical channel of building facades, which leads to rapid flame spread and overflow flame at the window interval, causing huge losses. Upward flame spread over discrete polymethyl methacrylate plates (PMMA) in a vertical channel of building facades was experimentally studied in this work. Meanwhile, the coupling effect of structure factor (the ratio of sidewall width to back wall width) and fuel coverage (the ratio of PMMA height to the total height of PMMA and window interval) on PMMA flame spread was revealed. The results showed that the maximum temperature at 3 cm away from the surface of PMMA first rose and then dropped with the increase of the structure factor. However, the maximum temperature at the center of the vertical channel decreased with the increase of the structure factor. For different fuel coverage, the temperature of the window overflow flame and the back wall gradually increased with the increase of the structure factor. When the fuel coverage was 0.52–1, the increase rate of flame height decreased with the decrease of fuel coverage. A model for predicting the flame height was established, and its prediction results agree well with the changing trend of experimental results of the flame height under different structure factors and fuel coverages. This work is beneficial for fire safety assessment of PMMA in the vertical channel with window intervals.