Application of Stereoscopic PIV to Measure the Flow of Air Into An Enclosure Containing a Fire

Published

August 1, 2009

Author(s)

Rodney A. Bryant

Abstract

Flow fields encountered in full-scale enclosure fires are highly three-dimensional and span a large spatial extent. Stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (SPIV) was applied to provide a large-scale planar interrogation of the flow of air available to a series of fires burning inside an enclosure. Time-averaged velocity fields across the doorway of the enclosure are presented. These flows are bi-directional and SPIV reveals that the time-averaged height of the region of flow reversal depends on location within the doorway. The volume flow rate of available air computed from the classical one-dimensional flow approach agrees well with the numerical integration using the velocity field provided by SPIV. Good agreement between the measured velocities for SPIV configurations optimized for seed particle displacements along the laser sheet axis and optimized for displacements perpendicular to the laser sheet demonstrate that large-scale SPIV measurements can be conducted with very good precision.

Citation

Experiments in Fluids

Volume

47

Issue

No. 2

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

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Keywords

enclosures, air, flow fields, velocity fields, doorways, flow rate, lasers, heat release rate, statistics, natural gas, mass flow, experiments, equations, fire spread

Citation

Bryant, R. (2009), Application of Stereoscopic PIV to Measure the Flow of Air Into An Enclosure Containing a Fire, Experiments in Fluids, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=911295 (Accessed October 9, 2025)