Publications

Test plan for validation of the radiative transfer equation

Kearney, S.P.; Ricks, Allen J.; Grasser, Thomas W.; Jernigan, Dann A.

As the capabilities of numerical simulations increase, decision makers are increasingly relying upon simulations rather than experiments to assess risks across a wide variety of accident scenarios including fires. There are still, however, many aspects of fires that are either not well understood or are difficult to treat from first principles due to the computational expense. For a simulation to be truly predictive and to provide decision makers with information which can be reliably used for risk assessment the remaining physical processes must be studied and suitable models developed for the effects of the physics. A set of experiments are outlined in this report which will provide soot volume fraction/temperature data and heat flux (intensity) data for the validation of models for the radiative transfer equation. In addition, a complete set of boundary condition measurements will be taken to allow full fire predictions for validation of the entire fire model. The experiments will be performed with a lightly-sooting liquid hydrocarbon fuel fire in the fully turbulent scale range (2 m diameter).