Water-mist systems have become a promising technology in the fire-fighting field over the last twenty years. The present work is aimed at employing the available knowledge on water-mist sprays in an experimental and numerical analysis of the suppression mechanism. Therefore, a water-mist system has been operated within a typical fire case. Most notably, this latter is constituted by a heptane pool fire: experiments have been carried out inside a test chamber, where a set of thermocouples has conveniently been placed to evaluate the thermal transient at different locations of interest. Some free-combustion tests have been run as a benchmark to validate combustion models. Then, a typical water-mist nozzle has been inserted and activated to realize control, suppression and potential extinction of the generated fire. The recognized FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator) and Fluent® codes have been challenged in reproducing the test case: thermal transient and suppression time have been considered as parameters for validation. Therefore, the water-mist spray has been modeled and the already mentioned results about its characterization have been implemented as initial or boundary conditions. Moreover, the fire scenario has been modeled as well. A good agreement between experimental and numerical results has been obtained, even under some approximations, with specific reference to combustion mechanisms.

Fire suppression by water-mist sprays: experimental and numerical analysis

PULVIRENTI, BEATRICE;VALDISERRI, PAOLO;
2010

Abstract

Water-mist systems have become a promising technology in the fire-fighting field over the last twenty years. The present work is aimed at employing the available knowledge on water-mist sprays in an experimental and numerical analysis of the suppression mechanism. Therefore, a water-mist system has been operated within a typical fire case. Most notably, this latter is constituted by a heptane pool fire: experiments have been carried out inside a test chamber, where a set of thermocouples has conveniently been placed to evaluate the thermal transient at different locations of interest. Some free-combustion tests have been run as a benchmark to validate combustion models. Then, a typical water-mist nozzle has been inserted and activated to realize control, suppression and potential extinction of the generated fire. The recognized FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator) and Fluent® codes have been challenged in reproducing the test case: thermal transient and suppression time have been considered as parameters for validation. Therefore, the water-mist spray has been modeled and the already mentioned results about its characterization have been implemented as initial or boundary conditions. Moreover, the fire scenario has been modeled as well. A good agreement between experimental and numerical results has been obtained, even under some approximations, with specific reference to combustion mechanisms.
2010
2010 14th International Heat Transfer Conference, Volume 5
571
580
P.E. Santangelo; P. Tartarini; B. Pulvirenti; P. Valdiserri; A.W.Marshall
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/101394
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