Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The complete flow pattern induced by unconfined fires is studied theoretically and experimentally. The theoretical development is based on kinematic relationships between the velocity, vorticity, and heat release fields. The flow both inside and outside a single fire plume is related to plume centerline velocity and temperature measurements. Very large area fires, such as those hypothesized in the Nuclear Winter scenario, are represented as ensembles of individual fires of differing strengths distributed over randomly chosen sites within the burning area. The experimental data for fire plumes over a four order of magnitude size range is compared with these calculations and previously developed plume velocity and temperature correlations.