• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.68-74
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• 2000

Experimental investigation on flame spread along suspended droplet arrays have been conducted with various droplet spacings and ambient air velocities. Especially, an opposed air stream is introduced to simulate fundamental flame spread behaviors in spray combustion. High-speed chemiluminescence imaging technique of OH radicals has been adopted to measure flame spread rates and to observe various flame spread behaviors. The fuel used is n-Decane and the air velocity varies from 0 to 17cm/s. The pattern of flame spread is grouped into two: a continuous mode and an intermittent one. It is found that there exists droplet spcings, above which flame spread does not occur. The increase of ambient air velocity causes the limit droplet spacing of flame spread to become small due to the increase of apparent flame stretch. As the ambient air velocity decreases, flame spread rate increases and then decreases after taking a maximum flame spread rate. This suggests that there exists a moderate air flowing to give a maximum flame spread rate due to enhanced chemical reaction by the increase of oxidizer concentration.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.131-139
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• 1999

Experimental investigations on flame spread in droplet arrays have been conducted under supercritical ambient pressures of fuel droplet. Flame spread rates are measured for n-Decane droplet of diameters of 0.75 and 1.0mm, using high speed images of OH chemiluminescence up to 3.0MPa. The pattern of flame spread is categorized into two: a continuous mode and an intermittent one. There exists a limit droplet spacing, above which flame spread does not occur. Flame spread rate with the decrease of droplet spacing increases and then decreases after takin& a maximum. It is also seen that there exists a limit ambient pressure, above which flame spread does not occur. Flame spread rate decreases monotonically with the increase of ambient pressure. Exceptionally, In the case of a small droplet spacing, flame spread with the increase of ambient pressure is extended to supercritical pressures of fuel droplet. This is caused by enhanced vaporization with the increase of ambient pressure. Consequently, in flame spread with droplet droplet spacing, the relative position of flame to droplet spacing plays an important role. The monotonic decrease with ambient pressure is mainly related to the reduction of flame radius in subcritical pressures and the extension to supercritical pressures of flame spread is caused by the reduction of ignition time of unburnt droplet due to the enhanced vaporization at supercritical pressures.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Combustion
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.1-11
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• 1998

Experimental investigation on flame spread of blended fuel droplet arrays has been conducted for droplet diameters of 1.0mm and 0.75mm using high-speed chemiluminescence images of OH radical. The flame spread rate is measured with blended fuel composition, droplet diameter, and droplet spacing. Flame spread is categorized into two: a continuous mode and an intermittent one. There exist a limit droplet spacing, above which flame does not spread, and a droplet spacing of maximum flame spread, which is closely related to flame diameter. It is seen that flame spread rate is mainly dependent upon the relative position of flame zone within a droplet spacing. In case of large droplet, the increase of % volume of Heptane induces the shift of limit droplet spacing to a larger spacing since volatile Heptane plays a role of an enhancer of flame spread rate. In case of small droplet, the increase of % volume of Heptane leads to the shift of limit droplet spacing to a smaller droplet spacing. This is so because of the delayed chemical reaction time by the rapid increase of mass flux of fuel vapor for small droplet.

• 한국연소학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2012.04a
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• pp.249-252
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• 2012

Experiments have been conducted to clarify flame spread behavior over electrical wire near the end of wire with applied AC electric fields. It is seen that the flame spread behavior near the end of wire with applied AC electric fields are quite different from that in temporally linearly-increasing flame position. The flame spread behavior can be categorized into three regimes based on the relevance of flame shape and the slanted direction of spread flame to spread rate. Detailed explanations on the characteristics are made through thermal balance mechanism. Also, the effect of drop of molten PE and fuel vapor-jet in flame spread is also discussed.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.140-148
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• 1999

Experiments on flame spread in an one-dimensional droplet array up to supercritical pressures of fuel droplet have been conducted In normal gravity and microgravity. Evaporating process around unburnt droplet is observed through high-speed Schlieren and direct visualizations in detail, and flame spread rate is measured using high speed chemiluminescence images of OH radical. Flame spread behaviors are categorized into three: flame spread is continuous at low pressures and is regularly intermittent up to the critical pressure of fuel. flame spread is irregularly intermittent and zig-zag at supercritical pressures of fuel. At atmospheric pressure, the limit droplet spacing and the droplet spacing of maximum flame spread rate in microgravity are larger than those in normal gravity. In microgravity, the flame spread rate with the increase of ambient pressure decreases initially, takes a minimum, and then decreases after taking maximum. This is so because the flame spread time is determined by competing effects between the increased transfer time of thermal boundary layer due to reduced flame diameter and the reduced ignition delay time in terms of the increase of ambient pressure. Consequently, it is found that flame spread behaviors in microgravity are considerably different from those in normal gravity due to the absence of natural convection.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.03b
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• pp.80-83
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• 2008

The characteristics of the spread of a forest fire are generally related to the attributes of combustibles, geographical features, and meteorological conditions, such as wind conditions. The most common methodology used to create a prediction model for the spread of forest fires, based on the numerical analysis of the development stages of a forest fire, is an analysis of heat energy transmission by the stage of heat transmission. When a forest fire breaks out, the analysis of the transmission velocity of heat energy is quantifiable by the spread velocity of flame movement through a physical and chemical analysis at every stage of the fire development from flame production and heat transmission to its termination. In this study, the formula used for the 1-dimensional surface forest fire behavior prediction model, derived from a numerical analysis of the surface flame spread rate of solid combustibles, is introduced. The formula for the 1-dimensional surface forest fire behavior prediction model is the estimated equation of the flame spread velocity, depending on the condition of wind velocity on the ground. Experimental and theoretical equations on flame duration, flame height, flame temperature, ignition temperature of surface fuels, etc., has been applied to the device of this formula. As a result of a comparison between the ROS(rate of spread) from this formula and ROSs from various equations of other models or experimental values, a trend suggesting an increasing curved line of the exponent function under 3m/s or less wind velocity condition was identified. As a result of a comparison between experimental values and numerically analyzed values for fallen pine tree leaves, the flame spread velocity reveals has a error of less than 20%.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.299-310
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• 2021

External fire spread has the potential to breach vertical compartmentation and violate the fire safety strategy of a building. The traditional design solution to this has been the use of non-combustible materials and spandrel panels but recent audits show that combustible materials are widespread and included in highly complex systems. Furthermore, most jurisdictions no longer require detailing of spandrel panels under many different circumstances. These buildings require rapid investigation using rational scientific methods to be able to adequately classify the fire risk. In this work, we use an extensive experimental campaign of material-scale data to explore the critical parameters driving upward flame spread. Two criteria are outlined using two different approaches. The first evaluates the time to ignition and the time to burnout to assess the ability for a fire to spread, and can be easily determined using traditional means. The second evaluates the preheated flame length as the critical parameter driving flame spread. A wide range of cladding materials are ranked according to these criteria to show their potential propensity to flame spread. From this, designers can use conservative approaches to perform fire risk assessments for buildings with combustible materials or can be used to aid decision-making. Precise estimates of flame spread rates within complex façade systems are not achievable with the current level of knowledge and will require a substantial amount of work to make progress.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Combustion
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2002

Flame spread experiments of a fuel droplet array were performed using a microgravity environment. N-decane, 1-octadecene, and the blends (50% : 50% vol.) of these fuels were used and the experiments were conducted at pressures up to 5.0 MPa, which are over the critical pressure of these fuels. Observations of the flame spread phenomenon were conducted for OH radical emission images recorded using a high-speed video camera. The flame spread rates were calculated based on the time history of the spreading forehead of the OH emission images. The flame spread rate of the n-decane droplet-array decreased with pressure and had its minimum at a pressure around half of the critical pressure and then increased again with pressure. It had its maximum at a pressure over the critical pressure and then decreased gradually. The pressure dependence of flame spread rate of 1-octadecene were similar to those of n-decan, but the magnitude of the spread rate was much smaller than that of n-decane. The variation of the flame spread for the blended fuel was similar to that of n-decane in the pressure range from atmospheric pressure to near the critical pressure of the blended fuel. When the pressure increased further, it approached to that of 1-octadecene. Numerically estimated gas-liquid equilibrium states proved that almost all the fuel gas which evaporated from the droplet at ordinary pressure consisted of n-decane whereas near and over the critical pressure, the composition of the fuel gas was almost the same as that of the liquid phase, so that the effects of 1-octadecene on the flame spread rate was significant.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.225-229
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• 2011

The aluminum composite panel are widely used for the external materials of high rise building because of well insulation of heat and sound and improved Constructability. However, the polyethylene in main material of the aluminum composite panel shows weakness in thermal and fire resistances. For this reason, flame is spread more quickly when the fire break out. Therefore, the potentiality of fire spread to the exterior wall is high due to difficulty of early extinguishment and effect of external air. In this study, numerical investigation was performed by using FDS program for flame spread characteristics with various external air velocity and direction in ten-story building with the aluminum composite external materials. As a result, the flame spread velocity is 0.134m/s and it takes 224 seconds for flames to spread to the 10th floor without external air velocity. however, the flame spread velocity decreases 40% and it takes 348 seconds for flames to spread to the 10th floor when external air velocity is 2.5 m/s. and air direction is little effect compared to air velocity.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 1997.11a
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• pp.154-161
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• 1997

Several studies have developed upward flame spread models which use somewhat different features. However, the models have not considered the transient effects of the igniter and the burning rate. Thus, the objective of this study is to examine a generalized upward flame spread model which includes these effects. We shall compare the results with results from simpler models used in the past in order to examine the importance of the simplifying assumptions. We compare these results using PMMA, and we also include experimental results for comparison. The results of the comparison indicate that flame velocity depends on the thermal properties of a material, the specific model for flame length and transient burning rate, as well as other variables including the heat flux by igniter and flame itself. The results from the generalized upward flame spread model can provide a prediction of flame velocity, flame and pyrolysis height, burnout time and position, and rate of energy output as a function of time.