An experimental and numerical study on fire suppression using a water mist in an enclosure

The present study investigates the fire suppression characteristics using a water mist fire suppression system. The fire extinguishing time and the temperature fields in the enclosed compartment of 4.0 m x 4.0 m x 2.3 m are measured by K-type thermocouples for various fire sources. The oxygen concentrations are also obtained by the gas analyzer. It is found that there are two different regimes in the temporal variations of the smoke layer temperature. One is the initial sudden cooling regime, and the other is the gradual cooling one. A critical cooling time is defined as the time during which the sudden cooling persists. Furthermore, the numerical simulations are extensively performed using Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS, Ver. 3.0) code and the predictions are compared with experimental data. The predicted results are in good agreement with experimental data in temperature fields. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.