Thermal properties and smoke diffusion of oil pool fires in engine room

A fundamental study on heat and mass transfer characteristics of a engine room fire is carried out. At first an oil burning experiment in a box-type compartment, which is a simplified engine room fire model, is conducted on limited ventilation condition to investigate the smoke production and movement for such type of engine room fires. From the experiments, several types of quantitative relation between the oil burning rate and the smoke generating rate are obtained. Then an experiment and a three-dimensional CFD numerical simulation of smoke movement on a practical engine room model are performed to investigate the smoke characteristics in a compartment with complicated geometry. Quantitative and qualitative comparisons are made between the measurements and the numerical predictions.