Experimental and numerical study of upward flame spread and heat transfer over expanded polystyrene at different altitudes

Abstract Experimental and numerical study on upward, vertical flame spread was carried out on expanded polystyrene (EPS) at two different altitudes of 50 m and 3658 m to understand the effect that altitude has on flame spread of melted material. The experiments show that, with the altitude increase, the flame spread rate would decrease. At low altitude, the flame spread rate accelerated at later time, while at high altitude, the stagnant stage of pyrolysis front was formed. The numerical simulation could well give the trend of pyrolysis front evolution and the different flame spread behaviors with altitudes. It was found that, at low altitude, R a x increased slowly in the turbulent period with relatively large entrainment air flow rate, mainly due to the increased and then decreased mass loss rate in the wall fire zone. While, at high altitude, the simulated increasing entrainment air flow rate, combined with the larger preheating length δ f and the smaller flame heat flux q f " , resulted in the stagnancy of pyrolysis front easily. It was hypothesized that extinction occurred eventually at high altitude due to competition between flame spread rate ν f and preheating length δ f .