The influence of a plate obstacle on the burning behavior of small scale pool fires: An experimental study

Abstract

For a typical thermal runaway process of uncontrolled energy release, pool fires are typically associated with the safety of energy application in modern production and life. In order to improve fire safety in energy utilization, it is significant to investigate the burning behavior of pool fire incorporating burning rate and flame characteristic, which are fundamental parameters in hazard prediction and risk management. Although there are different obstructions in real industrial fire scenarios, nearly no work has been conducted to explore the influence of obstruction on pool fires. Aiming at characterizing the influence of a plate obstacle on pool fire, a series of small-scale pool fires affected by plate obstacle are performed. The findings show the plate obstacle above the burner has a considerable effect on the burning behaviors of n-heptane and ethanol pool fires. The plate obstacle over the burner would result in a rapidly developing fire with higher burning rate. The external radiation from plate obstacle to the fuel surface was found to be responsible for the burning rate enhancement through the heat transfer analysis. Furthermore, based on the theoretical and scaling analysis, a new correlation for burning rate is proposed to describe the effect of plate obstacle, and the relationship between mean radiation heat flux and the characteristics of plate obstacle is revealed. It is expected this work will help to understand the burning behavior of pool fires in a more realistic fire setting.