Experimental and numerical study on attenuation of thermal radiation from large-scale pool fires by water mist curtain

Abstract

Full-scale experiments and numerical simulations were conducted to study the thermal radiation attenuation from large fires by water mist curtain with low and intermediate pressures. Fire dynamics simulator (version 6) was used for numerical simulations. A novel multi-injector nozzle was designed to generate a homogeneous water mist curtain with low water consumption. Water mist characteristics of one of the injectors were measured by Shadowgraphy technology. A 1 × 1 m diesel pool fire was considered as the fire source. The experimental results show that the water mist curtain has high thermal radiation attenuation efficiency, for example, about 82.7% radiant heat flux could be attenuated by the water mist curtain with 2 MPa working pressure and flow rate of 13.3 L/min. Comparisons with the experimental results show that the calculated radiant heat flux and temperature are slightly underestimated.