22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-6.8.2

DEVELOPMENT OF THE LOW-TEMPERATURE FIRE EVENT MODELLING TECHNIQUE

A. J. Neely (1), A. R. Abu Talib (1), P. T. Ireland (1), A. J. Mullender (2)
(1) University of Oxford, UK; (2) Rolls-Royce plc, UK

Keywords: aircraft, engine, fire, certification, burner, heat transfer

A novel technique has been developed to model the behaviour of aircraft components under flame attack. This new technique is cheaper, faster and provides test data at higher resolution than the standard technique. The flow field of a certification-standard Propane-air burner is simulated at low temperature using a mixture of Helium and air with mixture ratio, flow rates and scale chosen to achieve correct matching of the relevant non-dimensional groups. The effects of mixing between the burner plume and the surrounding ambient air are also accounted for in the simulation. Heat transfer coefficient and gas temperature distributions, scaled from measurements in the low-temperature analogue plume, are input as boundary conditions to a numerical simulation of the fire test. The technique has been demonstrated by its ability to reproduce the measured component metal temperatures from an actual fire test. The design of the analogue burner has being refined to streamline the low temperature technique and further increase its accuracy.

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