A small steel box, whose size was 1.0 m × 1.0 m ×1.0 m, was built for studying the flame characteristics of small pool fires. The pressure inside this box could be altered by a vacuum pump as a laboratory test rig. The fuels including gasoline and n-heptane were tested. The flame height and the flame pulsation frequency of the small-scale pool fires were experimentally determined. The results show that the flame height is proportional to the ambient pressure, and it will decrease with reducing ambient pressure. The flame pulsation frequency also decreased with reducing ambient pressure, and the laminar flame occurs when the ambient pressure is low enough. Some theory models were developed to explain this phenomenon in experiments.
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