Numerical and experimental study of fire smoke plumes in stably thermally stratified environments

For better understanding of early fire smoke movements in thermally stratified environments in large volume spaces, a detailed study of smoldering cotton rope smoke and flaming diesel oil smoke plumes in thermally stratified environments in a small scale enclosure was investigated by experimental measurements and CFD simulations. The reasonably good agreements of the experimental results and the simulated results show that the thermally stratified environment intensified the decreases of the-axial temperatures and velocities of a fire smoke plume until made it finally terminate at a fixed height. The integral equation underestimates the actual maximum height of a fire smoke plume and neglects the influences of the light or heavy smoke upon the maximum heights indicating that the previous available integral model should be improved for better applications in real fire situations.