Citation

Luo M, Beck V. Fire Safety J. 1996; 26(3): 191-219.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Realistic fire environments in a prototype multi-room apartment in a multi-storey building are studied. The fires are designed as non-flashover and flashover types, using standard polyurethane mattresses as fuel. A comprehensive set of experimental data is presented. The measured results include flame spread velocity, mass release rate, gas temperature, radiation heat flux and gas analysis. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model, called a CESARE-CFD fire model, has been used to simulate these polyurethane slab fires. The CFD model is described by three-dimensional transport equations for mass, momentum and enthalpy. The turbulence flow was modelled using the k-[epsilon] model. A soot formation model and a flame spread model were incorporated into the CFD model. The flame spread velocity and the mass release rate of the polyurethane slab fires were predicted in this study. It was found that the CFD model provided reasonable predictions of the magnitude and trends for the experiments both in the non-flashover and flashover fire cases.