- Author
-
Loikkanen, P.
|
Tuomisaari, M.
- Title
- Suppression of Compartment Fires With a Small Amount of Water. Part 1.
- Coporate
- VTT-Technical Research Center of Finland, Espoo
- Report
-
Research Report PAL2192/92,
December 30, 1992,
48 p.
- Keywords
-
compartment fires
|
water
|
fire investigations
|
fire extinguishing agents
|
fire suppression
|
equipment design
- Identifiers
- Fire Demand (FD) model
- Abstract
- This report contains a systematical investigation into the factors affecting the most efficient use of fire extinguishing water. The investigation is based on a water suppression program, the so called Fire Demand (FD) model which is developed in the United States. The main emphasis of the investigation lies in the influence of fire extinguishing equipment and tactics on the result of suppression, but also the significance of the fire compartment and fuel load have been considered to some extent. The results show that of the nozzle parameters particularly the average drop size and flow rate greatly affect suppression times and the total amount of used water. The significance of these factors is far from being adequately considered in designing the nozzles being presently used. Besides the equipment, also fire suppression tactics affects the result of suppression so that even with optimal nozzle parameters but with poor tactics much time and water can be wasted. With better equipment design and efficient training the practical suppression work could be considerably improved. The FD model proved to be a particularly useful and promising program for various applications such as for training and designing experiments. Other applications could be for instance risk analysis for various sites, preparation of building safety codes, designing of fire protection and development of equipment and standards.