Design of an actively cooled plate calorimeter for the investigation of pool fire heat fluxes

摘要

For final qualification of shipping containers for transport of hazardous materials, thermal testing in accordance with regulations such as 10CFR71 must be completed. Such tests typically consist of 30 minute exposures with the container fully engulfed in flames from a large, open pool of JP4 jet engine fuel. Despite careful engineering analyses of the container, testing often reveals design problems that must be solved by modification and expensive retesting of the container. One source of this problem is the wide variation in surface heat flux to the container that occurs in pool fires. Average heat fluxes of 50 to 60 kW/m(sup 2) are typical and close the values implied by the radiation model in 10CFR71, but peak fluxes up to 150 kW/m(sup 2) are routinely observed in fires. Heat fluxes in pool fires have been shown to be a function of surface temperature of the container, height above the pool, surface orientation, wind, and other variables. If local variations in the surface heat flux to the container could be better predicted, design analyses would become more accurate, and fewer problems will be uncovered during testing. The objective of the calorimeter design described in this paper is to measure accurately pool fire heat fluxes under controlled conditions, and to provide data for calibration of improved analytical models of local flame-surface interactions.