HEAT RELEASE RATE AS A PARAMETER FOR FIRE SPREAD – A CASE STUDY

Indoor fires very often may cause great material damage and endanger human lives. The heat produced by fire affects the heating and ignition of surrounding flammable materials, as well as the heating of the building structure, causing its damage. It is well known that fire spread mostly depends on flammability and quantity of surrounding material, but small differences in the amount of fuel can significantly affect the speed of fire spread, and consequently, rate of heat released by fire. In this paper, the influence of the heat release rate on fire spreading is shown. The Large Eddy Simulation method of Fire Dynamics Simulator software package has been used to investigate the prediction of fire dynamics in a compartment. Numerical results show that the fire dynamics in the compartment is largely dependent on the quantity of fire load mass and the heat release rate during the fire.