Citation

Ruffino P, diMarzo M. Fire Safety J. 2004; 39(8): 721-736.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

When a fire occurs, the sprinkler closest to the location of the fire typically activates first and releases water droplets into the rising plume of hot gases. Part of these droplets is entrained by the plume and may impact on adjacent sprinklers providing evaporative cooling and thus delaying their activation. The model of the thermal response of sprinklers in these conditions suggests the introduction of the concept of equivalent cylindrical links: a solid metallic cylinder is said to be equivalent to a given fire sprinkler link if it reaches the activation temperature of the sprinkler at the same time, both in dry conditions and in presence of water droplets carried by the hot gas flow. Tests are conducted on both fire sprinklers and equivalent cylindrical links to validate this theoretical approach. The results compare favorably both in dry and wet conditions for the range of parameters considered in this study. Therefore, this approach enables the transient quantification of the sprinkler thermal response in an actual fire scenario such as a large-scale fire test.