Experimental flame heat transfer correlations for a steel column adjacent to and surrounded by a pool fire

Abstract

Heat flux and temperature measurements were conducted on a square steel column adjacent to and surrounded by fire sources from the interest in the application to the structural fire safety design of metal structures. The tests on the adjacent fires demonstrate a description of the heat flux profile along the column surface as a single function of the height normalized by flame height for each column-fire distance and notable decrease of surface heat flux by the increase of the column-source distance. Surface temperature of the column in this configuration was found to be notably lower than the estimate from heat flux data based on the uniform heating assumption, which suggests the significance of the conductive heat loss to unheated surfaces of the column. The tests on the surrounding fires has resulted in heat flux profile weakly dependent on heat release rate and coincidence of the measured surface temperature and its estimate from heat flux due to rather even heat flux on all surfaces of the column. Copyright © International Association for Fire Safety Science.