A numerical study of the fire-extinguishing performance of water mist in an opening machinery space

Spray fire is a primary disaster in machinery space. Previous studies demonstrated that small spray fires were difficult to extinguish with water mist. A numerical and experimental study of the process of water mist interacting with the small size spray fire was conducted. Studies on suppression of vertical spray fire and horizontal spray fire were carried out, respectively. Three-dimensional physical model was developed based on the experiments. The adopted numerical model is FLUENT. The Large eddy simulation (LES) method, laminar finite-rate model, and Discrete Phase Model were selected to solve the turbulent flame, turbulence-chemistry interaction and particles, respectively. There are qualitative agreements of simulation with the experiment. It was confirmed that water mist can suppress spray fires rapidly, and that the extinguishing time for vertical spray fires were relatively shorter. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.