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Enclosure fires

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Flashover<br />

Sample calculation: Heat release rate required for a fl ashover<br />

Let us take a room measuring 3.6 m × 2.4 m × 2.4 m. The<br />

opening is in the form of a door 0.8 m wide and 2 m high. The<br />

enclosure material is lightweight concrete. Calculate the heat<br />

release rate required for the fi re in the room to progress to<br />

fl ashover.<br />

To start with, h k is calculated. For fairly short periods of time<br />

h k is determined by h k = (k3c/t) 0.5 , where k3c represents the<br />

material’s properties and t is the time from when the fi re<br />

started. k3c for lightweight concrete is roughly 75000 W 2 s/<br />

m 4 K 2 . The time is assumed to be 10 minutes. We can assume<br />

that the fi re service has arrived by that point.<br />

h k is calculated using the expression √k3c/t and will equal 0.0112 kW/m 2 K.<br />

The values are entered in the equation:<br />

Q fo = 610(h k A T A W √H ) 0.5<br />

This gives: Q fo = 610 (0.0112 × 44.48 × 1.6 × 2 0.5 ) 0.5 = 650 kW<br />

This can be compared to a sofa, which releases between 1 and 2<br />

MW. The heat release required is therefore much less than this.<br />

If we had calculated instead the heat release rate required to<br />

cause a fl ashover after 2–3 minutes, it would be much higher.<br />

You can even try by varying the time (t) in the expression for h k.<br />

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