Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Until now, very few works have been devoted to the predictions of the flame structure resulting from the combustion of a vertical burning wall adjacent to a rectangular pool fire at the floor level. This paper describes the application of a three-dimensional model to the prediction of the aerodynamic field and the thermal structure using a finite volume method for solving the fluid dynamic equations. The model employs two-equations, k-E turbulence model. The gas-phase, non-premixed combustion process is modeled via the conservated scalar/prescribed density function approach. It can be indicated that the merging of the diffusion flames between a vertical burning wall and a pool fire at the floor level induces a rapid broadening of the buoyant gas column. As a consequence, the flame thickness remains almost constant all along the vertical burning wall, and the buoyantly induced plume closer to the horizontal combustible surface is strongly narrowed. Predictions are shown to be in reasonable agreement with measurements and areas requiring further research are selected.