• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.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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• 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%.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.90-95
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• 2009

The wind is very important factor in forest fire spread. Flame spread has a change through wind pattern change in forest fire. In order to analyze the forest fire flame spread rate, change of flame tilt depending on wind may be considering first. This is be cause the flame spread rate varies by the flame tilt changed due to transfer of heat. Especially, as wind speed grow, flame gets closer to surface, heat transfer ratio increase, virgin fuel bed reaches ignition temperature more rapidly, and flame moves faster. This study deduces, through experiment and physical figure analysis, relations on the change behavior of flame tilt due to wind. The value of flame tilt angle calculated from the equation and the experiment value showed average error angle of $3.3^{\circ}$, which is relatively smaller than results of previous studies that used other coefficient. Froude number coefficient A can be calculated in the method provided in this research for estimation of flame tilt angle of virgin fuel bed with varying thermal properties. The research finding is expected to be applied to future studies on flame spread through numerical analysis of heat transfer.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.78-83
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• 2016

The characteristics of flame spread under similar atmospheric conditions to those inside the first stage of launch vehicles were investigated to provide fundamental knowledge to prevent fires and explosions of vehicles during launching operations. To this end, the rate of flame spread on the solid fuel was measured at elevated oxygen concentrations and reduced atmospheric pressures. A 0.18 mm diameter optical fiber was used as a solid fuel. The experimental results indicated that elevated oxygen concentrations can increase the rate of flame spread while increasing the atmospheric pressures to 1 atm can lead to decreases in the rate of flame spread. The increases in the rate of flame spread with pressure is due mainly to reductions in the convective heat loss that are clarified through an analysis of the pressure dependence on the convective heat transfer coefficient.