Case study on thermal and flow analysis of a water mist on a pool fire in a ventilated engine compartment

Public transport buses and other large vehicles are facing increasing engine fire issues stemming from higher operating temperatures, phonic insulation and low maintenance time. The fire suppression systems currently employed or considered for vehicles could be used for the protection of buses. Water mist is one of these technologies. One of the challenges a water mist faces for the fire protection of small enclosures is the ventilation. Inside a full scale engine compartment of a truck, the interaction and heat transfer between a n-heptane pool fire and water mist droplets are studied using velocimetry techniques. Most notably, the influence of the nozzle operating pressure and a variable cross-flow ventilation on the extinguishing performance is explored. In this preliminary study without clutter, the results show the importance of the ventilation flow on the performance of the water mist. Moderate ventilation speeds up to 3.2 m s^-1 show an improvement of the extinguishing time over natural ventilation while a higher ventilation speed of 6.4 m s^-1 degrades the extinguishing performance of the mist. For low-pressure water mists, the momentum of the spray is the most important factor for water mist extinguishing performance.