- Author
- Kanury, A. M.
- Title
- Scaling Correlation of Flashover Experiments. Final Report.
- Coporate
- Notre Dame Univ., IN
- Sponsor
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
- NBS GCR 83-448, October 1983, 79 p.
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Contract
- GRANT-NB81NADA2021
- Keywords
- compartment fires | fire growth | fire tests | flashover | measurement | room fires | scale models
- Abstract
- The objective of research described here is to develop a correspondence between the measurements made on the fire growth process to flashover in compartments of different scales. Such a development is useful in predicting, from the necessarily limited existing experimental information, the conditions conductive to result in flashover and the time to flashover. Special consideration is given to the role of the room dimensions (absolute and relative), the lintel height, wall-linings, the character of the fire source, and others. Preliminary scaling rules are synthesized to relate the full-scale compartment fires with small-scale test fires; these rules are then applied to certain full-and quarter-scale model test data of the Bureau of Standards focusing on the issue of flashover as influenced by lintel height, partially successful. Data of all the tests in which flashover occurred within a finite time correlate in a reasonable fashion. However, test data in which flashover time is infinity do not obey the scaling hypothesis. The issue of whether or not flashover would occur, thus, seems to be unsettled by this work.