Study of the Transitional State between Two Wood Crib Burning Regimes by CO Concentration in a Confined Space

Abstract

Traditionally, the burning of wood cribs has been divided into a surface area controlled regime, and a porosity controlled regime according to mass loss rate. In the two regimes, the concentration of CO produced should also have different characteristics. In this paper, the variation of concentration of CO produced by burning wood cribs is studied. A series of experiments with different wood crib structures are conducted. The mass loss rate and the concentration of CO are measured. It has been found that the concentration of CO has an obvious transitional state, and the corresponding transitional value of porosity factor for dividing the two burning regimes according to the concentration of CO is exactly the same as that according to the mass loss rate.

Keywords

wood crib surface area controlled porosity controlled carbon monoxide concentration porosity factor

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Takahashi, S. (1985). Experimental and Theory in the Extinction of a Wood Crib , In: Fire Safety Science - Proceedings of the First International Symposium, Hemisphere Pub., pp. 1197-1226 .

Atkinson, G. (1995). Smoke Movement Driven by a Fire Under a Ceiling , Fire Safety Journal, 25: 261-275 .

Bill Jr., R.G. , Hansen, R.L and Richards, K. (1997). Fine Spray (Water Mist) Protection of Shipboard Engine Rooms , Fire Safety Journal, 29: 317-336 .

Wang, Z. , Jia, F. , Galea, E.R. , Patel, M.K. and Ewer, J. (2001). Simulating One of the CIB W14 Round Robin Test Cases using the SMARTFIRE Fire Field Model , Fire Safety Journal, 36: 661-677 .

Gross, D. (1962). Experiments on the Burning of Cross Piles of Wood , Journal of Research of the National Bureau of Standards-C. Engineering and Instrumentation, 66C(2): 99-105 .

Block, J.A. (1971). A Theoretical and Experimental Study of Non-Propagating Free-burning Fires , In: 13th Symposium (International) on Combustion, The Combustion Institute, Pittsburgh, USA, pp. 971-978 .

Hu, L.H. , Huo, R. , Li, Y.Z. and Wang, H.B. (2004). Experimental Study on the Burning Characteristics of Wood Cribs in a Confined Space , Journal of Fire Sciences, 22(6): 473-489 .

Quintiere, J.G. and McCaffrey, B.J. (1980). The Burning of Wood and Plastic Cribs in an Enclosure, Vol. 1, pp. 27-35, NBSIR 80-2054.

Babrauskas, V. (1995). Burning Rate, In: SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering, Chapter 3-1, Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA .

10.

Huo, R. , Hu, Y. and Li, Y.Z. (1999). An Introduction to Building Fire Safety Engineering, pp. 30-31, Press of University of Science and Technology of China (in Chinese).

11.

Drysdale, D. (1998). An Introduction to Fire Dynamics, 2nd edn, Chapter 5-2, pp. 189-190, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., England .

12.

Chen, Y.M. and Huo, R. (1998). Theoretical and Experimental Investigations of Fire Spread Rate and Mass Loss Rate of Crib Fires in Free Space , Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University, 32(1): 66-70 .