Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

A major problem in fire protection is the design of protective installations for single-storey warehouses of more than 6 m (20 ft) in height. The need to make maximum use of available floor area has led to the introduction of many such high stacked storages with differing degrees of automation and of heights up to 30 m (100 ft). These present a high fire hazard in both their configuration, which assists rapid fire growth, and in the high value of goods stored. This note describes an investigation of the effectiveness of high expansion foam, combined with different types of fire detection equipment, in controlling fires developing in a palletized storage of height 7.3 m (24 ft), consisting of two rows of back-to-back pallets at four levels. The high expansion foam was found to be effective in controlling the fires with the range of fill rates and application times employed. It was found that early application of the foam was necessary to prevent the fire from reaching ceiling level and that the foam cover might need to be maintained for some hours to ensure complete extinction of the fire.