Experimental study of fire compartment with door opening and roof opening

A series of reduced‐scale experimental fires was conducted to study the characteristics of fire induced vent flows in a reduced‐scale post‐flashover fire compartment with a door opening and a roof opening. The fire source was a heptane pool fire near the wall furthest from the door vent. In the study, the roof vent opening area was systematically varied between experiments and the characteristics of vent flows through the door opening are presented as a function of the roof vent opening area. The experimental results show that the mass flow rate of air into the compartment increases linearly as the size of roof vent opening increases. Analytical vent flow calculations based on the hydrostatic pressure difference between two quiescent environments are presented for a post‐flashover fire compartment with both horizontal and vertical openings. The calculated results are in good agreement with the experimental measurements. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.