Experimental Characterization of a Smoke Flow in a Small Length Corridor

Smoke propagation into a corridor configuration is an important issue in fire safety engineering. One important characteristic is the smoke behaviour in the steady state, namely, the smoke layer thickness, its mean temperature and its mean velocity. The question that is investigated here is how these quantities vary as a function of the corridor geometrical characteristics and of the fire heat release rate. To achieve this goal, new experimental data are provided in a small scale configuration. The results show that the smoke layer thickness is independent of the heat release rate of the pool fire. By rescaling the velocity and temperature profiles with respect to the fire heat release rate, these profiles fall onto unique curves. Finally, based on energy and mass conservation equations, a scaling relation is proposed for the smoke enthalpy.