Jet Fires: An Experimental Study of the Main Geometrical Features of the Flame in Subsonic and Sonic Regimes

Although jet fires are usually smaller than other fires, they may lead to a destructive chain of events that can increase the scale of all accident. Therefore. their size should be predicted for accurate risk assessment. In the literature. most of the proposals for estimating jet fire size concern small jet fires (up to 2.5 m in length) or subsonic flames. In this study, experiments on relatively large propane jet fires in still air were performed. Vertical turbulent diffusion flames up to 10 m in length, with sonic and subsonic mass flow rates, were obtained using six different orifice exit diameters. The experiments were filmed with video and thermographic cameras and the resulting visible and infrared images were used to determine flame length and lift-off distance. Expressions for estimating jet length as a function of several variables (mass flow rate, orifice exit diameter, Froude and Reynolds numbers) are also proposed. (C) 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J. 55: 256-263. 2009