An experimental investigation of flame length of alcohol and N-heptane pool fires under air cross condition

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the effect of airflow speed on flame length of liquid pool fires has been experimentally studied based on a small-scale wind tunnel, where the airflow speed was varied from 0 to 2.93 m/s during the tests. Different sizes of the pool with 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 10 cm diameter were considered. The experimental results show that with increase of , the non-dimensional flame length of alcohol pool fire firstly increases and then decreases after exceeds 8.0, while the non-dimensional flame length of n-heptane pool fire increases with increase of . It was also found that the flame length response to the airflow speed correlates to heat release rate of the fire, which was seriously influenced by combustion efficiency. A model was also developed for predicting flame length of a pool fire influenced by airflow with .

KEYWORDS:

• airflow speed
• combustion efficiency
• flame length
• heat transfer
• pool fire

Funding

The work in this study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51408181, and 51574210), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. JZ2016HGBZ0766 and JZ2017HGTB0208), the Opening Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Fire Science, University of Science and Technology of China (No. HZ2017-KF01).

Additional information

Funding

The work in this study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51408181, and 51574210), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. JZ2016HGBZ0766 and JZ2017HGTB0208), the Opening Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Fire Science, University of Science and Technology of China (No. HZ2017-KF01).