Alexandra Byström

Measurement and calculation of adiabatic surface temperature in a full-scale compartment fire experiment

Adiabatic surface temperature is an efficient way of expressing thermal exposure. It can be used for bridging the gap between fire models and temperature models, as well as between fire testing and temperature models. In this study, a full-scale compartment fire experiment with wood crib fuel was carried out in a concrete building. Temperatures were measured with plate thermometers and ordinary thermocouples. Five plate thermometers and five thermocouples with a diameter of 0.25 mm were installed at different positions. These two different temperature devices recorded different temperatures, especially near the floor surface. The adiabatic surface temperature was derived by a heat balance analysis from the plate thermometer measurements. The thermal inertia of the plate thermometer was taken into account to correct the measured results. In addition, the fire experiment scenario was also simulated with fire dynamics simulator. The fire source was specified as a given heat release rate, which was calculated from the measured mass loss rate of the wood fuel. The adiabatic surface temperatures at these measuring positions were simulated by the fire dynamics simulator model and compared with the experimental adiabatic surface temperatures. The comparative results showed that fire dynamics simulator predicted the adiabatic surface temperature accurately during the steady-state period.

Use of plate thermometers for better estimate of fire development

The concept of Adiabatic Surface Temperature (AST) opens possibilities to calculate heat transfer to a solid surface based on one temperature instead of two as is needed when heat transfer by both radiation and convection must be considered. The Adiabatic Surface Temperature is defined as the temperature of a surface which cannot absorb or lose heat to the environment, i.e. a perfect insulator. Accordingly, the AST is a weighted mean temperature of the radiation temperature and the gas temperature depending on the heat transfer coefficients. A determining factor for introducing the concept of AST is that it can be measured with a cheap and robust method called the plate thermometer (PT), even under harsh fire conditions. Alternative methods for measuring thermal exposure under similar conditions involve water cooled heat flux meters that are in most realistic situations difficult to use and very costly and impractical. This paper presents examples concerning how the concept of AST can be used in practice both in reaction-to-fire tests and in large scale scenarios where structures are exposed to high and inhomogeneous temperature conditions.

Large Scale Test on a Steel Column Exposed to Localized Fire

A localized fire is a fire which in a compartment is unlikely to reach flash-over and uniform temperature distribution. Designing for localized fires is generally more difficult than for flash-over compartment fires because of the complexity of the problem. There is also a lack of experimental data. We report here on a full scale test series on a steel column exposed to localized fires. The setup is a 6 meters tall hollow circular column, ϕ = 200 mm with a steel thickness of 10 mm. The unloaded column was hanging centrally above different pool fires. Temperatures of gas and steel were measured by thermocouples, and adiabatic surface temperatures at the steel surface were measured by plate thermometers of various designs. The results are compared with estimates based on Eurocode 1991-1-2 which in all cases studied overestimate the thermal impact for this setup. The input from plate thermometers was used to compute the steel temperatures using finite element methods. Excellent agreement was found if the rad...

Compartment fire temperature - a new simple calculation method

In this paper a new simple calculation method for compartment temperatures is derived. The method is applicable to post-flashover ventilation controlled fires. A parameter termed the ultimate compartment fire temperature is defined as the temperature obtained when thermal equilibrium is reached and thick compartment boundaries cannot absorb any more heat from the fire gases. This temperature depends only on the product of the heat of combustion and the combustion efficiency over the specific heat capacity of air. It is, however, independent of the air mass flow rate, and of the fire compartment geometry and the thermal properties of the compartment boundary materials. These parameters on the other hand govern the rate at which the fire temperature is increasing towards the ultimate temperature. It is shown how the fire temperature development as a function of time in some idealized cases may be calculated by a simple analytical closed form formula. The fire temperature developments of two types of compartment boundaries are presented, semi-infinitely thick and thin structures. It is also shown that for the semi-infinite case, the solution resembles the standard ISO 834/EN 1363-1 curve and the parametric fire curves according to Eurocode 1, EN 1991-1-2.

Thermal analysis of a pool fire test in a steel container

A pool fire test was conducted in an uninsulated steel container under low ambient temperature condition, at −20°C. The heat balance of the enclosure fire was analyzed. The size of the container was 12 m× 2.4 m and 2.4 m high, and it was made of 3-mm-thick steel. During the fire test, the fuel mass loss rate was recorded and the temperatures at different positions were measured with high-temperature thermocouples and plate thermometers. The fire scenario was simulated by using fire dynamics simulator software, and the simulated and measured results were compared. The coarse high-temperature thermocouple responded slower, and therefore, temperature measured by the high-temperature thermocouple was corrected to eliminate the effect of the thermal inertia. Furthermore, a simple two-zone model was proposed for estimating gas temperature in the enclosure of the highly conductive steel walls assuming a constant combustion rate. The convective and radiative heat transfer resistances at the inside and outside surfaces of the enclosure were analyzed.