Vertical Temperature Profile of a Buoyant Plume in an Atrium

Abstract

The temperatures of buoyant fire plumes were measured vertically and compared with the Zukoski model, the Heskestad model, and the McCaffrey model. Predictions by the Heskestad and McCaffrey models were closer to the measured value with average deviation of 18.4% and 18.6%, respectively, while those by the Zukoski model were much lower than the measured value with average deviation of 36.7%. The power law decay index of z was found to increase slightly with fire size, rather than being constant in the models. The coefficient for the variation of ΔT with Q^2/3 z^−5/3 it was found to be 20.9 experimentally, near to that of the Heskestad and McCaffrey models.

Keywords:

• axis-symmetric fire plume
• gasoline pool fire
• centerline temperature
• power law decay index