Experimental Quantification of Fire Damage Inside Pyrotechnic Stores

Abstract

A fire inside a pyrotechnic store can lead to simultaneous initiation of the stored articles, regardless of their risk category, producing a shockwave caused by the released gas pressure. In fact, several accidents have occurred throughout history in pyrotechnic stores. This indicates the high risk posed by pyrotechnics due to their flammability. Due to the lack of global or European legislation on guidelines for the design of pyrotechnic stores and associated risk assessment, the present research aims to analyze the consequences of a fire inside pyrotechnic stores and to establish globally possible effective prevention and protection measures in order to reduce explosion risk and avoid future accidents. The observed consequences and the reflected pressure (pressure measured when the wave is incident perpendicularly on the transducer) measured during fire tests inside a pyrotechnic store indicated the need to minimize the potential occurrence of fires. The limitation of the maximum permissible load, considering the volume of the store (kg/m3), reduces consequence severity in the event of an accident. However, the maximum permissible levels should be so low as to make their use for retail sales of pyrotechnic products unviable. The solution is the use of automatic fire detection and extinguishing systems with a high cooling capacity in order to prevent the spread to nearby packaging by rapid detection.