- Author
- Cannon, J. B. | Zukoski, E. E.
- Title
- Turbulent Mixing in Vertical Shafts Under Conditions Applicable to Fires in High Rise Buildings. Technical Report No. 1.
- Coporate
- California Inst. of Technology, Pasadena
- Sponsor
- National Science Foundation, Washington, DC
- Report
- Technical Report 1, January 1976, 157 p.
- Contract
- NSF-GRANT-GI-31892X
- Keywords
- high rise buildings
- Abstract
- This study was an attempt to analyze convective flow patterns under conditions applicable to fires in high rise buildings when natural convection alone is the most important driving force. The primary aim of this investigation was to consider the turbulent flow in vertical shafts caused by hot gses entering the botton of the shaft which is already filled with a cooler (denser) gas, and hence creating an unstable density field. The small scale model used to study this problem consisted of a vertical tube of dense fluid placed in an infinite (less dense) fluid environment. General scaling laws were developed for the variation of density with time for the flow set up in the model. Also, an analytical model was developed to account for the observed mixing rates in this simple configuration.