Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

This report gives an account of six large-scale tests on goods stored on pallets in a system of racking at 6 levels. The storage was protected by a sprinkler system mounted centrally within the racking at each level. The effect of varying the numbers of sprinklers per pallet cell, the use of each and alternate sprinkler levels and the size of the sprinklers (10 or 15 mm bore) on the development of the fires was studied. This arrangement was found to give good general protection to the racking and goods, in that the fire would have been contained and subdued, but in all but one experiment the fire spread throughout the height of the racking. Lateral spread was restricted to the width of the cell of origin. Automatic detection equipment was found to operate about two minutes before the operation of the first sprinkler. The operation of the sprinklers caused the production of a certain amount of cool smoke which sank to ground level.