Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

In an earlier study experimental observations of swirling fires based on self-generated swirling flows were undertaken. The swirl was caused by properly channeling the entrainment flow due to the fire itself. It was found that one of the most significant parameters governing the combustion process and the stability of the whirling flame was the entrainment flow controlled by the presence of symmetrical gaps separating the square vertical bounding walls surrounding the fire. In the present study, the physical phenomena of how the channeled entrainment flow affects the whirling flame has been simulated numerically by an approximate fire field mow, which captures essentially the same whirling fire phenomena as observed in the experiments. In particular, the quantitative effect of gap sizes between bounding walls and several other parameters such as heat load, fuel size, and enclosure wall height on the plume dynamics and whirling flame stability have been numerically determined.