Burning Rate of Fuels and Generation Limit of the External Flames in Compartment Fire

The generation of external flames from windows, which plays a important role in upper floor fire spread, depends on the fire behavior in the compartment. Small scale fire tests using methanol, PMMA and wood as the fuels were conducted to investigate into the effect of fuel conditions on burning rate and generation of external flames. The measurement of the temperature, the burning rate and the heat release rare, and the observation of emergence of the external flames were conducted for different fuel and ventilation conditions. It is found that the burning rate obtained by Kawagoe et al. for ventilation controlled period of crib fire holds regardless of the type of the fuels tested in this study and that the criteria established based on stoichiometric air/fuel ratio and ventilation factor may be used for assessing the emergence of the external flames.