- Author
-
McCaffrey, B. J.
|
Rinkinen, W. J.
- Title
- Fire Environment in Counterflow Ventilation (The In-Flight Cabin Aircraft Fire Problem).
- Coporate
- Maryland Univ., Baltimore
National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Sponsor
- Federal Aviation Administration, Atlantic City International Airport, NJ
- Report
-
NBSIR 88-3806
June 1988
99 p.
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Keywords
-
aircraft fires
|
heat transfer
|
scale models
|
simulation
|
ventilation
|
seats
- Abstract
- Using propane gas burning in a diffusive mode, fire sources up to the equivalent heat release rate of a fully involved seat were simulated in an approximately 1/2-scale closed section of a ventilated wide-body aircraft cabin. The ventilation flow direction was as in commercial practice-counter to that of the buoyancy driven fire gases, i.e., fresh air was forced in at the top of the enclosure and drawn out at the bottom. Results for the 1/2-scale system indicate that for nominal ventilation rates, significant enthalpy exchange through ventilation in times corresponding to a few airchanges is limited. That is, only a small proportion of the energy release rate of the fire is getting exhausted. These results will depend on time, it may not be a general conclusion. Also the time response of the aircraft cabin material may be different than this experimental facility, and a complete dimensionless variable analysis might suggest different time scales, full to 1/2 scale. Correlations of thermal conditions in the enclosure as a function of time, heat release rate of the fire, and position in the cabin are presented. Semi-infinite transient conduction models appear adquate in capturing the essential features of the fire plume-ceiling thermal interaction. Reduced data on PC-readable floppy disks for the entire test series will be made available for future cabin modelling purposes.