Citation

Cooper LY. Fire Safety J. 2000; 34(3): 219-255.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Model equations, suitable for general use in compartment fire models, are developed to simulate the thermal response to arbitrary fire environments of fusible-link-activated automatic fire vents. The method of analysis, which focused on a prototype three-element link-mount design, can be extended to arbitrary multiple-element link mounts, including single-element simply supported links. A method was developed to determine the values of the set of parameters that characterize a particular multiple link-mount design. This involves: (1) the measured time-dependent thermal response of the link-mount design to exposure in a plunge test, the type of test used to characterize the thermal response of sprinkler links; and (2) an analytic means of determining values of the design parameters that yield an optimum fit between a solution to the model equations and the temperature data. The method takes account of the pre-fusing solder-melting phase of fusible-link response. The latter was shown to be very important for the link design used in this study. The method was carried out successfully for four plunge tests involving three link-mount systems and one or two system/flow orientations. The resulting system parameters and model equations were used in a successful simulation of vent actuation in a real, large-scale, fire scenario.