Research Facility
Pool Fire Test Facility
Annual Report (2001) of the Center for the Simulation of the Accidental Fires and Explosions (C-SAFE). The experiments are carried out in the C-SAFE Pool Fire Test Facility (PFTF).
Funding support
- University of Utah Center for the Simulation of Accidental Fires and Explosions (C-SAFE), funded by the Department of Energy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, under subcontract B341493.
Transient Heat Transfer to a Cylindrical Container Engulfed in a Pool Fire
When an explosive device is accidentally exposed to an enveloping fire, it will, after a certain period of time, undergo a thermally induced reaction that may cause damage to the surroundings. The time to reaction depends strongly on the amount of heat flux crossing the container surface into the explosive.
The prediction of the heat flux requires a good understanding of the fire cylinder interactions. Due to the complexity of the phenomena, the determination of the transient heat flux across the explosive is addressed by splitting the problem into two parts as shown in the figure.
The first problem addresses the steel-fire interface, in which the amount of heat flux from the flame toward the cylinder surface is determined. The second problem addresses the steel-explosive interface, in which the amount of heat flux crossing into explosive is determined.
Steel-fire experimental set up
A 0.1 m- diameter, 0.3 m- long steel cylinder is filled with a castable material having similar thermal characteristics to PBX 9501 and then engulfed in either a JP-8 or a surrogate fuel pool fire. Temperatures on the cylinder surface are indirectly obtained by placing thermocouples inside the steel shell. Radiative and total heat fluxes are measured with a radiometer and a total heat flux transducer respectively. Flame structural details and flame height are obtained by using a high-speed video camera. The soot volume fraction can be measured in situ in the flame based on the optical measurement of the extinction and the absorption coefficients. In addition, continuous black carbon concentrations can be obtained using a photoacoustic (PA) instrument. The PA utilizes a theoretical calibration to display soot volume fraction in function of time.
