Development of an innovative method for elementary heat release rate computation
Résumé
Fire safety engineering is nowadays an important way to improve safety in a large variety of buildings. Whatever the typology of building, one of the key points in order to evaluate the consequences of a fire consists in the ability in predicting the fire growth and total heat release rate inside the building. The beginning of such a modeling consists in evaluating the heat release rate of elementary component of the fire. In the specific case of warehouse storage, the pallets heat release rate is then crucial not only to predict fire growth inside the building and occupants' safety but to evaluate the total heat release rate for a generalized fire and consequences on the building environment too. A new model is then proposed to predict the heat release rate of a pallet in case of fire. This model consider the entire component located on this pallet, this means combustible that produce energy but also non combustible material that acts as a well. It also takes into account the arrangement of the combustible regarding that more ventilated is the fire, more important will be the power reached. Then, solving the global equilibrium between source and well enables to give a prediction of the heat release rate. This model was validated using a large number of fire tests achieved in the INERIS fire tunnel used as a large calorimeter. These tests include pallets that contain for example appliances, food products, toys, water bottle, clothes and some other. The comparison between the measured and computed heat release rate for those different products demonstrate the capability of the model.