- Author
- Jaluria, Y. | Tan, Q.
- Title
- Flow Through Horizontal Vents in Compartment Fires.
- Coporate
- Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, NJ
- Sponsor
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
- Session B-2,
- Contract
- NIST-GRANT-60NANB7D0743
- Book or Conf
- Combustion Institute/Eastern States Section. Chemical and Physical Processes in Combustion. Fall Technical Meeting, 1990. December 3-5, 1990, Orlando, FL, 61/1-4 p., 1990
- Keywords
- combustion | pool fires | enclosures | vents | compartment fires | equations
- Abstract
- The flow through horizontal vents, such as ceiling or floor vents in a multi-room compartment, is of considerable importance in the mathematical modeling of fires in such enclosures. The flow of the combustion products out of the room and the mass flow rate of oxygen being added to the room due to the flow through the vent are important inputs for studying the changing environment in the room. A density difference, with heavier fluid overlying lighter fluid, arises across the opening due to the heating up of the gases in the enclosure containing the fire. Similarly, a pressure difference is generated across the vent, with the pressure in the enclosure higher than outside due to the momentum force balance considerations in the flow. Therefore, the resulting flow rate through the vent as a function of [see report] and the thickness to diameter ratio L/D of the vent is of direct relevance to fire research. Here, [see report], the subscripts u and l referring to the regions above and below the vent, respectively. Thus, positive values of [see report] are of interest in typical enclosure fires. The flow through horizontal vents, as related to enclosure fires, has been considered in terms of available literature on such flows. However, though work has been done on buoyancy-driven vent flows for the special case of [see report] very little information is available for a nonzero pressure difference, which is of particular interest to vented room fires. Work has also been done on flows due to an applied pressure difference, with no buoyancy effects.