STUDIES ON CLOSED-CHAMBER FIRES

Closed chamber fires are studied by burning four types of organic liquids, namely ethanol, N-heptane, thinner and kerosene. The burning behaviour of the liquids was observed, and the hot gas temperature measured. Transient variations of the temperature are also compared with those predicted by three fire zone models which can be used to simulate a closed chamber fire. The three selected fire zone models are the ASET, the CFAST and the CCFM.VENTS. All were developed at the Building and Fire Research Laboratory, NIST, USA. The ASET model was run by the menu-driven program FLRECALC developed at the Division of Building and Construction, CISRO, Australia. The models ASET and CCFM.VENTS are found to be very suitable for predicting the hot gas temperature in a closed chamber as used in this study. Lastly, the response of four types of detectors are studied.