Studies on Smoke Temperature Distribution in a Building Corridor Based on Reduced-scale Experiments

Abstract

A reduced-scale (1:4) building corridor model was prepared to investigate the heat release rate (HRR) and smoke diffusion in a building corridor. Trays with heptane as fuel were used as fire sources. Three different sizes of trays were involved in this study to investigate the different HRRs. The results revealed that fire associated with larger trays exhibited a steeper power-law growth and decay. The temperature distributions in the corridor for the three cases showed similar tendencies. The temperature in the upper part of the corridor was relatively high, which decayed sharply along the corridor. However, the temperature in the lower part of the corridor was approximately the ambient temperature. Numerical simulation was also introduced to obtain more details regarding the temperature. The ceiling temperature was studied by using dimensionless parameters. The correlation between the ceiling temperature and the distance was fitted by using an exponential equation, and significant fitting results were obtained. Moreover, the vertical average temperatures in the corridor were also studied. The result indicated that greater HRRs led to higher vertical average temperatures with steeper growths and decreases.

Keywords

• fire
• building corridor
• heat release rate
• smoke temperature distribution