Scaled Experimental Study on Maximum Smoke Temperature along Corridors Subject to Room Fires

In room–corridor building geometry, the corridor smoke temperature is of great importance to fire protection engineering as indoor fires occur. Theoretical analysis and a set of reduced-scale model experiments were performed, and a virtual fire model was proposed, to investigate the correlations between the maximum smoke temperature in corridors and the smoke temperature in rooms. The results show that the dimensionless virtual fire heat release rate (HRR) is characterized by quadratic-polynomial of the dimensionless smoke temperature in fire rooms. The dimensionless distance from a virtual fire source to the corridor ceiling varies linearly with the dimensionless smoke temperature in a room. Results of multiple regression indicate that, at the impingement area of virtual fire, the dimensionless maximum smoke temperature in corridors is only related to the dimensionless virtual fire HRR; in the non-impingement area of a virtual fire, the dimensionless maximum smoke temperature in corridors is a function of the dimensionless virtual fire HRR and dimensionless longitude distance. The viscosity and conduction exhibit an insignificant impact on the maximum temperature in the corridor. Through replacing the parameters of virtual fire with the dimensionless smoke temperature in fire rooms, the correlations between dimensionless maximum temperature in corridors and the dimensionless smoke temperature in fire rooms were proposed. OPEN ACCESS Sustainability 2015, 7 11191