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Impacts of ceiling height on the combustion behaviors of pool fires beneath a ceiling

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Abstract

To examine the effect of varying ceiling height on the combustion behaviors of pool fires whose flame impinged the ceiling, a series of n-heptane pool fires was performed beneath a ceiling in the range of H ef/D = 0.43–2.5 using a scaled-down calorimeter. Typical parameters including the burning intensity, combustion yields and combustion efficiency were quantitatively analyzed. It was found that with the decreasing ceiling height, the burning intensity initially increased to a peak at H ef/D = 1.38 and then decreased, exhibiting a parabolic variation tendency. The maximum concentration increments of CO and CO2 showed the parallel results to the burning intensity, while the total amount of CO yield monotonously increased with the declining ceiling height, implying increasing toxicity. Besides, the carbon conversion ratio produced the similar result as the combustion efficiency, and both of them showed the parabolic variation law.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Major Projects of Civil Aviation of China (No. MHRD20130103) and the Grant from the Research Grant Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Contract Grant Number CityU 11301015). The authors deeply appreciate that.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Fire Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, Anhui, People’s Republic of China

    Jiahao Liu, Mingyi Chen, Xiao Lin & Jian Wang

  2. Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077, People’s Republic of China

    Jiahao Liu & Richard Yuen

Authors
  1. Jiahao Liu
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  2. Mingyi Chen
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  3. Xiao Lin
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  4. Richard Yuen
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  5. Jian Wang
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Correspondence to Jian Wang.

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Liu, J., Chen, M., Lin, X. et al. Impacts of ceiling height on the combustion behaviors of pool fires beneath a ceiling. J Therm Anal Calorim 126, 881–889 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-016-5559-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-016-5559-7

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