Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The burning behavior for non-charring fuels is modeled to predict the fire behavior in a compartment. This modeling considers the following phenomena: (i) the reduction of heat transfer from flame due to lack of oxygen mass fraction; and (ii) the thermal feedback from smoke layer and walls. In addition, a compartment integrated zone model is developed to obtain the parameters which are necessary for the prediction of fuel burning behavior. Namely, this approach applies a two-zone model for the growth or pre-flashover stage and a one-zone model for the fully developed or post-flashover stage which also incorporates the fuel burning behavior. Fire experiments in a cubic compartment are conducted to validate this model. Overall, calculations of this integrated compartment model give good agreement with the experiments of mass loss rate and temperature in the compartment.