- Author
- Battaglia, F. | Rehm, R. G. | Baum, H. R.
- Title
- Fluid Dynamics of Fire Whirls: An Inviscid Model.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
- NISTIR 6427, February 2000, 18 p.
- Distribution
- AVAILABLE FROM National Technical Information Service (NTIS), Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Springfield, VA 22161. Telephone: 1-800-553-6847 or 703-605-6000; Fax: 703-605-6900. Website: http://www.ntis.gov
- Keywords
- fire whirls | fluid dynamics | methodology | fire plumes | entrainment | combustion | buoyant plumes | equations
- Abstract
- Whirling fire plumes are known to increase the danger of naturally occurring or post-disaster fires. In order for a fire whirl to exist, there must be an organized source of angular momentum to produce the large swirl velocities as air is entrained into the fire plume. These vorticity-driven fires occur over a large range of length and velocity scales, and significantly alter the entrainment and combustion dynamics. A new model that incorporates angular rotation and neglects dissipation is derived for a buoyant plume; the result is a form of the steady state Euler equations. Included is a general solution for large density and temperature variations. Results that identify the mechanisms and their effects on the creation of a fire whirl are presented.