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Predicting HCl concentrations in fire enclosures using an HCl decay model coupled to a CFD‐based fire field model
Author(s) -
Wang Z.,
Jia F.,
Galea E. R.,
Patel M. K.,
Ewer J.
Publication year - 2007
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.942
Subject(s) - computational fluid dynamics , enclosure , combustion , mechanics , hydrogen chloride , mixing (physics) , chemistry , environmental science , wind tunnel , boundary value problem , meteorology , materials science , nuclear engineering , engineering , physics , inorganic chemistry , telecommunications , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics
The amount of atmospheric hydrogen chloride (HCl) within fire enclosures produced from the combustion of chloride‐based materials tends to decay as the fire effluent is transported through the enclosure due to mixing with fresh air and absorption by solids. This paper describes an HCl decay model, typically used in zone models, which has been modified and applied to a computational fluid dynamics (CFD)‐based fire field model. While the modified model still makes use of some empirical formulations to represent the deposition mechanisms, these have been reduced from the original three to two through the use of the CFD framework. Furthermore, the effect of HCl flow to the wall surfaces on the time to reach equilibrium between HCl in the boundary layer and on wall surfaces is addressed by the modified model. Simulation results using the modified HCl decay model are compared with data from three experiments. The model is found to be able to reproduce the experimental trends and the predicted HCl levels are in good agreement with measured values. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.