Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

An experimental study was made to explore the burning characteristics of heptane in 2.7m square dike fires, through measuring burning rate, flame temperature, thermal radiation, hot gas velocity and gas composition of flames. Two types of dike fire experiments were performed; one was a dike fire with four open top tank fires and another was a dike fire without tank. The results show that there is little difference between both types regarding total mass burning rate and thermal radiation, but it was noted that burning in the dike fire with open tanks was accelerated in spite of poorer air entrainment than that of the dike fire without tank based on the gas composition data and the ratio of air entrainments A/Ao (: Mass air entrainment, Ao: Mass air for stoichiometric combustion of heptane)