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Author
Blevins, L. G.
Title
Modeling of Thermocouple Behavior in Room Fires.
Coporate
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
Report
NISTIR 6242, October 1998,
Distribution
Available from National Technical Information Service
Book or Conf
National Institute of Standards and Technology. Annual Conference on Fire Research: Book of Abstracts. November 2-5, 1998, Gaithersburg, MD, Beall, K. A., Editors, 17-18 p., 1998
Keywords
fire research | fire science | fire suppression | room fires | aspirated thermocouples | temperature measurements
Abstract
As part of a NIST effort to characterize the uncertainties of temperature measurements in fire environments, idealized models of bare-bead, single-shielded aspirated, and double-shielded aspirated thermocouples were developed and used to study the effects of varying gas and average effective surroundings temperatures on percent error in measured temperature of each type of thermocouple. Steady-state, non-linear, algebraic energy balance equations combined with appropriate convective heat transfer correlations were solved. Probe and bead sizes closely matched those used in recent NIST experiments. Only one previous study has addressed aspirated thermocouples in fires.