RESUMO
Positioning the positive pressure ventilator in front of the door opening affects the effectiveness of the rescue operation carried out during a fire. An important factor determining the effectiveness of the positive pressure ventilator is also the layout of the rooms within the gas exchange path and the obstacles present there. The purpose of this article is to assess the feasibility of using analyses such as large eddy simulation (LES) to verify the efficiency of mobile fans under simulation conditions, without the need for time-consuming experimentation (also for complex room volumes of buildings). The article presents a comparative analysis to assess the degree of convergence of flow parameters obtained during an experiment (in a multi-story building) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. For volumetric flow rate, convergence was achieved at levels ranging from 0.4% (for 5 m) to 11.5% (1 m), and for pressure values, the differences achieved ranged from 0.6% (5 m) to 30.1% (4 m). This paper demonstrates that the LES model can be used to perform CFD simulations in the area of assessing the performance of a positive pressure ventilator. The article also describes a test methodology for determining the flow parameters of an air stream, which can be used to perform numerical simulations.
RESUMO
A common method for investigating various fire- and smoke-related phenoma is a reduced-scale fire modelling that uses the conservation concept of Froude number as its primary similarity criterion. Smoke obscuration measurements were not commonly used in this approach. In this paper, we propose a new type of optical densitometer that allows for smoke obscuration density measurements on a reduced-scale. This device uses a set of mirrors to increase the optical path length, so that the device may follow the geometrical scale of the model, but that still measures smoke obscuration as if it were in full scale. The principle of operation is based on the Bougher-Lambert-Beer law, with modifications related to the Froude number-based scaling principles, to streamline the measurements. The proposed low-budget (< $1000) device was built, calibrated with a set of the reference optical filters, and used in a series of full- (1:1) and reduced-scale (1:4) experiments with n-Heptane fires in a small compartment. The main limitation of this study is the assumption that there is similar soot production in full- and reduced-scale fires, which may not be true for many Froude-number scaling applications. Therefore, it must be investigated in a case-by-case basis. In our case, the results are promising. The measured obscuration in the reduced-scale had a 10% error versus averaged measurements in full-scale measurements. Moreover, there were well represented transient changes of the smoke layer optical density during the combustion and after the smoke layer settled.
