- Author
-
Mulholland, G. W.
|
Henzel, V.
|
Babrauskas, V.
- Title
- Effect of Scale on Smoke Emission.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Book or Conf
- U.S./Japan Government Cooperative Program on Natural Resources (UJNR). Fire Research and Safety. 10th Joint Panel Meeting. June 9-10, 1988,
Tsukuba, Japan,
132-134 p.,
1988
- Keywords
-
smoke emissions
|
scale effects
|
small scale fire tests
|
fire spread
|
optical properties
- Abstract
- Smoke produced in fires is a major concern. The emission of thermal radiation from smoke particulate in the flame plays a dominant role in fire spread. The reduced visibility caused by smoke is a significant impediment to persons escaping from fires. In addition to these issues, there is now a concern that smoke from fires ignited by the radiant flux from nuclear blasts could affect the global climate. Crutzen and Birks and Turco et al., both predicted a temperature reduction of more than 20 deg C for the northern hemisphere, assuming a major nuclear exchange in July. There is a very large uncertainty in this prediction due to the uncertainty in estimating the amount of smoke emitted, its light absorbing tendency, and its lifetime in the atmosphere. The National Academy of Sciences report contains plausible ranges for these parameters that typically span an order of magnitude.