Spatial temperature distribution of rectangular n-heptane pool fires with different aspect ratios and heat fluxes received by adjacent horizontal targets

Abstract

Rectangular or line pool fires present some different behaviors compared to circular and square pool fires. A series of experiments of rectangular n-heptane pool fires have been conducted in open space. A set of fuel pans with the same width of 8 cm but different aspect ratios of length to width (n = l/w:1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14) have been used. The results have showed that when n ≤ 6, the temperature rise ΔT at the same height is nearly unchanged from the pool center to the short pool edge, so the centerline temperature distribution of flame can be used to predict the vertical temperature distributions at different positions along the long pool edge. However, when n ≥ 8, an attenuation of the temperature occurs near the short pool edge. For the vertical distribution of centerline temperature rise, it is believed that the rectangular pool fires of n ≤ 2 have the similar patterns as point fire source and square fire source; for rectangular pool fires of n ≥ 3, one new correlation of flame centerline temperature rise has been proposed. Meanwhile, the heat fluxes received by adjacent horizontal targets also decrease when the horizontal distance increases.