Experimental study on mass burning rate and flame geometry of pool fires under two-way indirect ventilation in Ship's engine room

Abstract

The influence of wind on the combustion of pool fires has been demonstrated experimentally. However, the complex pipeline ventilation in the engine room is often ignored by existing research. For the typical ventilation structure of the engine room in this paper, a type of two-way/indirect ventilation structure in a confined space with dimensions of 1.5 × 1.5 × 1 m3 is built. N-heptane is used as the fuel, and a circular pool with a diameter of 10 cm is used in the experiments. The variation of mass burning rate and flame geometry under ventilation speeds of 0–4 m/s are studied. The results show that two-way/indirect ventilation greatly changes the combustion characteristics of the pool fires. The mass burning rate fluctuates and increases with increasing ventilation speed. The tilt angle and length of the flame changes nonlinearly with different ventilation speeds, and the ‘swaying’ phenomenon of flame tilt is presented. In addition, the existing correlations of the flame geometry of pool fires under ventilation are further improved. The models predicting flame tilt angle and flame length of pool fires with different ventilation speeds under two-way ventilation structure are established.

Keywords

• Ship engine room
• Pool fires
• Two-way/indirect ventilation
• Mass burning rate
• Flame geometry
• Ventilation speed