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Modeling of NBS mattress tests with the harvard mark V fire simulation
Author(s) -
Rockett John A.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
fire and materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.482
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-1018
pISSN - 0308-0501
DOI - 10.1002/fam.810060209
Subject(s) - bedroom , smoke , environmental science , ventilation (architecture) , combustion , waste management , toxicology , meteorology , engineering , chemistry , physics , civil engineering , organic chemistry , biology
NBS burned eleven mattresses made up with bedding in two different rooms, typical of a residential bedroom and a nursing home patient room, respectively. Seven of the mattresses flamed and burned vigorously, the other four were of a construction or so heavily flame‐inhibited that they only smoldered. The burning behavior of the seven that flamed was modeled with the Harvard Mark V fire simulation. The experimental burn behavior for tests conducted in one room was well reproduced using only total weight of combustible, surface area and heat of combustion. Smoke production values were found to have little effect on the predicted behavior except for the smoke production itself. Fires in a second room, whose ventilation was intentionally restricted by the configuration of the adjoining space, could not be as well reproduced by the present, single‐room fire model. During this study several changes were made to the simulation. The most significant change was the inclusion of mixing of the hot exiting fire gases with the cold incoming air. As a part of this, the inter‐layer radiation exchange was reformulated to include the effect of smoke contamination of the lower layer. The reformulation of the radiation model has a marked effect on the predicted upper layer gas temperatures, generally improving the quality of the simulation.