Citation

Rooney GG, Linden PF. Fire Safety J. 1997; 29(4): 235-258.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1997, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

We re-examine the problem of natural ventilation of a room containing a fire, in the light of recent results obtained by Rooney and Linden (1996) concerning the similarity solution for non-Boussinesq plumes. We consider the case of a steady fire in a compartment with openings at floor and ceiling levels, and obtain expressions for the depth and density of the homogeneous ceiling layer maintained by the fire plume. Taking the limit of a large lower opening area, we compare our results with experiments performed by Thomas et al. (1963). We also perform a sample calculation to estimate the size of the difference between the weakly and strongly buoyant cases.