- Author
-
McGrattan, K. B.
|
Baum, H. R.
|
Hamins, A.
- Title
- Thermal Radiation From Large Pool Fires.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
-
NISTIR 6546
November 2000
34 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; Rush Service (Telephone Orders Only) 800-553-6847; Website: http://www.ntis.gov
- Keywords
-
pool fires
|
thermal radiation
- Abstract
- In order to protect people and combustible structures from the thermal radiation emitted by a large fire, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has established thermal radiation flux levels of 31.5 kW/m2 (10,000 Btu/h/ft2) for buildings and 1.4 kW/m2 (450 Btu/h/ft2) for people as guidelines in determining an "Acceptable Separation Distance" (ASD) from a fire consuming combustible liquids or gases stored in above ground containers. A review by the Building and Fire Research Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the 1975 HUD guidelines for thermal radiation flux has revealed that for certain fire scenarios the methodology can produce estimates of radiation flux that are up to an order of magnitude larger than those actually measured in field experiments.