Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

This paper presents a study on the investigation of air entrainment in balcony spill plumes in the rotating region using CFD modeling and full-scale experiments. This study examines limiting conditions of the approach flow for the free balcony spill plume. The CFD model, Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) was used to investigate the impact of temperature and velocity on the balcony spill plume and the effect of critical components, such as balcony length, draft curtain and fascia, on the flow of the plume. The results of this study show that the trajectory of the flow is governed by its buoyancy and jet momentum. These effects can be represented by the Richardson number (Ri), which can be calculated from the temperature and velocity of the flow. The limiting Richardson number criteria was found to be approximately 0.7, which can be used to assess whether the balcony spill plume is free-unbounded.