Basic Experiment on the Heat Release Property of a Tsunami Fire Fueled by Debris and Fuel Oil Spilled on the Sea Surface Following Tsunami

Abstract

This paper describes an effort to model the heat release rate curve of a tsunami fire. A tsunami fire is defined as a fire that breaks out in coastal areas inundated by a tsunami following an earthquake. Tsunami fires may result in the ignition of tsunami refuge buildings. One type of tsunami fire is a fire where fuel oil spilled from tanks and an enormous amount of debris such as timber, broken houses and expanded polystyrene are burning together on the sea surface. We conducted basic combustion experiments for this type of fire using a pool with a size of 600 mm square where heat release rates were measured by varying the types of debris and the exposed surface areas of fuel oil. Furthermore, a model for heat release rate at the fully developed phase and time to the beginning of fire decay was proposed. The predictions of the proposed model are shown to be more conservative in comparison with the experimental data.