Source
2005 SME Annual Meeting, February 28 - March 2, Salt Lake City, Utah, Preprint 05-14. Littleton, CO, Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, Inc., 2005 Feb; :1-6
Abstract
Diesel fuel fire experiments were conducted in the NIOSH Pittsburgh Research Laboratory's Safety Research Coal Mine to determine the critical air velocity for preventing smoke rollback. Such information is necessary for the preplanning and implementation of ventilation changes during mine firefighting and rescue operations. The fire intensity varied from 50 to 300 kW depending on the fuel tray area. Airflow in the 2-m-high by 2.9-m-wide coal mine entry was regulated during the course of each experiment, measured upwind from the fire as an average over the entry cross-section with an ultrasonic airflow sensor, and recorded dynamically with a mine monitoring system. The extent of smoke reversal was monitored with light obscuration monitors, ionization smoke sensors, and visual observations. Experimental results for the critical air velocity for smoke reversal as a function of fire intensity compared very well with model predictions based on a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) fire dynamics simulator.