Experimental data from compartment fires with gas burner and upholstered furniture fuels

Abstract

There exists a variety of specialized fire dynamics routines, zone fire models, and field fire models. Many of these heuristics and correlations rely on experimental data from fires fueled by gas burners or liquid pool fires and have had minimal, if any, validation against data from fires with solid, more complex fuels, such as upholstered furniture. One hundred and twenty fire experiments were conducted inside a compartment that contained a single ventilation opening in the form of a doorway that was either open or closed for the entirety of each experiment. The fires were fueled by natural gas burners and upholstered furniture items. The compartment was instrumented throughout with thermocouples, oxygen sampling probes, heat flux gauges (total and radiative), pressure transducers, and bi-directional probes. Additionally, heat release rate data were collected during open door experiments with fires larger than 100 kW. This experimental series was designed to better quantify the repeatability of and differences between natural gas burner and upholstered furniture fuels and to provide new validation cases for the fire modeling community.

Keywords: Compartment fires; Fire investigation; Fire model validation; Gas burner; Repeatability; Upholstered furniture.