Temperature effects on the mass flow rate in the SBI and similar heat-release rate test equipment

✍ Scribed by Bart J. G. Sette; Erwin Theuns; Bart Merci; Paul Vandevelde

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 188 KB
• Volume: 31
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0308-0501
• DOI: 10.1002/fam.925

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

In various medium‐to‐large‐scale fire test equipments like the ISO room corner test (RC), and more recently, the single burning item test (SBI) the mass flow rate measurement of the combustion gases plays a key role in the determination of the heat‐release rate and smoke‐production rate.

With the knowledge of the velocity profile and the temperature of the flow, the mass flow rate is obtained by measuring the velocity on the axis of the duct. This is done by means of a bi‐directional probe based on the pitot principle.

However, due to the variation of the mean temperature and the temperature gradient in any cross section of the duct, introduced by ever changing combustion gas temperatures, the velocity nor the density profile are constant in time. This paper examines the resulting uncertainty on the mass flow rate. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.