Fire Experiments Conducted at the Technical Institute of Fire Protection

During the first half of April, members of the laboratory carried out a series of fire experiments at the Technical Institute of Fire Protection in Prague.

The experimental campaign began with free-burning pool fires using methanol, heptane, and toluene, representing fuels with different soot yields. The objective was to determine their mass loss rates and radiative heat fluxes under well-defined conditions. Selected burner sizes were subsequently tested inside a compartment enclosure ("box"), representing a 2/5-scale model of the NIST TN 1603 experimental configuration.

An important part of the campaign was the active involvement of our students, who assembled and positioned the measurement instrumentation themselves. The experiments included measurements of gas temperatures, radiative heat fluxes, soot concentrations, flame heights, gas species concentrations, and flow velocities.

The collected data will serve as a validation database for CFD fire simulations under well-defined boundary conditions. Following the successful completion of this experimental campaign, we plan to further improve the experimental apparatus and extend the range of measurements in future studies.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to everyone involved in the experiments, especially the staff of the Technical Institute of Fire Protection for providing the facilities, equipment, and technical support, and to Assoc. Prof. Milan Jahoda, who designed and assembled the compartment enclosure used throughout the campaign.