An Experimental Investigation of the External Wind Effects on the Ceiling Temperature Distribution of Fire-Induced Thermal Flow in a Corridor Connected to a Compartment

Abstract

Fire-induced thermal flow is the greatest threat to trapped people and the heat-resistant quality of building structures. This paper presents an experimental investigation of the effects of external wind on the ceiling temperature distribution of fire-induced thermal flow in a one-sixth scale corridor connected to a compartment. In the experiments, the fire source was placed in the compartment with hot thermal flow spilled into the connected corridor. The heat release rate (HRR) was changed from 10 to 20 kW and the external wind velocity was changed from 0 to 2.09 m/s. The ends of the corridor could be adjusted to be fully or partially open to the environment with dam-boards arranged at the ends of the corridor. An effective corridor HRR, Qcorridor, was defined to account for the amount of the spilled plume into the corridor. Results show that the temperature under the ceiling changed in a non-monotonic way with wind velocity: it first increased and then decreased with wind velocity. It was revealed that the dam-boards at the corridor opening had an evidently shielding effect, leading to higher temperature compared to the fully open environment. Finally, uniform correlations are proposed for predicting the attenuation law of ceiling temperature profiles in corridors for different wind conditions.

Keywords

• fire-induced thermal flow
• temperature distribution
• ceiling temperature
• corridor
• external wind