Thesis (Ph. D.)--Worcester Polytechnic Institute. / Keywords: suppression; drop size; high flash point pool fire. Includes bibliographical references (p. 210-218).

"The primary purpose of this research was to quantify fire suppression and fire intensification phenomena for water spray application to high flash point hydrocarbon oil pool fires. Test data and analyses of the phenomena include the drop size distribution and application and delivered densities of various water sprays, and spray-induced oil cooling and oil splattering for mineral seal oil and for cooking oil 30-cm diameter pool fires. Four different types of tests were conducted as described below. A Dantec Particle Dynamic, phase Doppler, Analyzer was used to measure the water drop sizes and velocities generated by 13 selected nozzles and sprinkler heads. Most measurements were made 0.91 m (3 ft) below the nozzles/sprinklers, since this was the location of the center of the hydrocarbon pool in later fire tests. The correlations for the volume-median drop diameter, dw, were of the form , where D is the nozzle orifice and is the spray Weber number based on D and the nozzle velocity. A ring burner was designed and constructed for uniformly heating oil pool surfaces from above and igniting them. The resulting oil temperatures while the oil was heated to its flash point satisfied the one-dimensional transient heat conduction model for a semi-infinitely thick solid with a shallow heated layer near the surface. Water sprays actuated when the oil surface temperature reached its flash point rapidly cooled the heated layer and caused mixing with the cooler oil below. Fire suppression tests were conducted to determine the relationship between required water spray density, drop size, and oil temperature in order to achieve suppression. A data correlation using non-dimensional parameters was developed to quantify the fire suppression criteria for the high flash point oil fires. Oil pool fires with the higher flash point oils, such as the 291oC flash point soybean oil, could be suppressed with much lower water densities than those of the lower flash point (137oC) mineral seal oil. However, if the water spray drop sizes are sufficiently small, the lower flash point oil fires can also be extinguished with lower spray densities. The NFPA 15 specified critical water density (0.30 gpm/ft2, 12 mm/min) to extinguish high flash point pool fires is only valid for mineral seal oil when the drop size is lower than about 300 µm. It is valid with larger drop sprays only when the flash point of the oil is higher than 190 according to the correlation developed here. Spray-induced pool fire intensification tests were conducted under a fire products calorimeter for measuring heat release rates. Supplemental oil vaporization rate tests were also conducted to determine the contributions of oil vaporization and oil splattering to the intensified fire. Results showed that vaporization could only account for between 1% and 1.7% of the heat release rate in intensified mineral seal oil fires, and less than 1% of the heat release rate in intensified soybean oil fires. The remainder is due to spray-induced oil splattering, which increased with increasing drop Weber number as well as increased oil temperature. The heat release rate is enhanced by factor from 2.12 to 5.55 compared to the heat release rate of free burning cooking oil. For mineral seal oil, this ratio is in the range 0.92 to 1.25 for the spray conditions tested. Correlations with the dimensionless factors of and the Weber number of the water spray were also developed to quantify the ratio of the splattered oil to applied spray density."

An understanding of compartment fire behaviour is important for fire protection engineers. For design purposes, whether to use a prescriptive code or performance based design, life safety and property protection issues are required to be assessed. The use of design fires in computer modelling is the general method to determine fire safety. However these computer models are generally limited to the input of one design fire, with consideration of the complex interaction between fuel packages and the compartment environment being simplified. Of particular interest is the Heat Release Rate, HRR, as this is the commonly prescribed design parameter for fire modelling. If the HRR is not accurate then it can be subsequently argued that the design scenario may be flawed. Therefore the selection of the most appropriate fire design scenario is critical, and an increased level of understanding of compartment behaviour is an invaluable aid to fire engineering assumptions. This thesis details an experimental study to enhance the understanding of the impact and interaction that the size and location of pool fires within an enclosure have upon the compartment fire behaviour. Thirty four experiments were conducted in a reduced scale compartment (½ height) with dimensions of 3.6m long by 2.4m wide by 1.2m high using five typical ventilation geometries (fully open, soffit, door, window and small window). Heptane pool fires were used, located in permutations of three evenly distributed locations within the compartment (rear, centre and front) as well as larger equivalent area pans located only in the centre. This thesis describes the experimental development, setup and results of the experimental study. To assist in the classification of compartment fire behaviour during the experiments, a ‘phi’ meter was developed to measure the time dependent equivalence ratio. The phi meter was developed and configured to measure O₂, CO₂ and CO. The background development, calibration, and experimental results are reported. A review of compartment fire modelling using Fire Dynamics Simulator, has also been completed and the results discussed. The results of this experimental study were found to have significant implications for Fire Safety Engineering in that the size of the fire is not as significant as the location of the fire. The effect of a fire near the vent opening was found to have a significant impact on compartment fire behaviour with the vent located fuel source increasing the total compartment heat release rate by a factor of 1.7 to that of a centrally placed pool fire of the same total fuel area. The assumption that a fire located in the centre of the room provides for the highest heat release rate is not valid for post-flashover compartment fires. The phi meter was found to provide good agreement with the equivalence ratio calculated from total compartment mass loss rates, and the results of FDS modelling indicate that the use of the model in its current form can not be applied to complex pool fire geometries.