- Author
- Sincaglia, P. E.
- Title
- Modeling of Glass Fracture Due to Compartment Fire Implemented Into the WPI/Fire Code.
- Coporate
- Worcester Polytechnic Inst., MA
- Report
- Thesis, September 1992, 128 p.
- Keywords
- fire codes | glass | windows | cracking (fracturing) | physics | fire models | validation | heat transfer | temperature distribution | compartments
- Identifiers
- glass pane
- Abstract
- One of the most important events in compartment fire development is the fracture and subsequent destruction of a glass window due to exposure to the hot gas environment. Prior to shattering, the window acts as a barrier, but once the glass breaks, the window becomes an open vent providing the fire with a new exhaust vent and more importantly, a new source of oxygen rich air. The importance of this event was brought to the attention of the engineering community by Professor Howard Emmons in 1986. He postulated that the mechanism that causes window failure is induced thermal stresses within the glass pane due to the heating from the fire gases. Since then, there have been a number of theoretical investigators of this phenomemon, the most rigorous of which was performed by P. Pagni and A. Joshi. The result of their analysis is a one-dimensional criterion that predicts the time at which a window will fracture which is dependent upon the temperature distribution through the glass pane. The goal of this thesis is to develop a detailed, one-dimensional heat transfer model for a glass pane including external and internal radiant effects and then to implement this one-dimensional model into the WPI/Fire Code. Prior to the completion of this thesis, none of the existing computer fire simulation programs contained algorithms for the time of window fracture. Finally some attempt was made at validating this model using the very limited amount of data available in the literature.