- Author
-
Tse, S. D. Y.
- Title
- Experimental Investigation of Two-Dimensional Smoldering and the Transition to Flaming in Flexible Polyurethane Foam.
- Coporate
- California Univ., Berkeley
- Report
-
Thesis,
1996,
195 p.
- Keywords
-
polyurethane foams
|
flexible foams
|
smoldering
|
heat transfer
|
mass transfer
|
temperature measurements
|
interferometry
|
exhaust gases
|
porous materials
|
experiments
|
wind tunnels
- Abstract
- Experiments have been conducted to study the controlling mechanisms involved in the transition from smoldering to flaming of a porous combustible material, flexible (open-cell) polyurethane foam, with an air-flow forced acrossone of the porous-fuel surfaces. The experiments are performed in a small scale, vertical, combustion wind-tunnel, with the exposed porous-fuel surface forming one of the walls of the test-section. Air flow (traning from none to 2.5 m/s) is forced upward and parallel to an exposed foam surface to examine how a smoldering fuel responds to increased oxygen supply and heat transfer. Smolder is initiated at the bottom of the sample and propagates upward in the same direction as the externally forced air-flow. The buoyancy-induced flows within the porous-fuel interior are also upward. The resulting smolder is therefore two-dimensional and forward. The smolder results observed by varying the air-flow velocity reveal three regimes.