Publications

@article{Gollner2011,

title = {Warehouse commodity classification from fundamental principles. Part I: Commodity \& burning rates},

author = {M J Gollner and K Overholt and F A Williams and A S Rangwala and J Perricone},

url = {http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0379711211000555},

doi = {10.1016/j.firesaf.2011.03.002},

issn = {03797112},

year  = {2011},

date = {2011-08-01},

journal = {Fire Safety Journal},

volume = {46},

number = {6},

pages = {305--316},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{gollner2011upward,

title = {Upward flame spread over corrugated cardboard},

author = {Michael J Gollner and Forman A Williams and Ali S Rangwala},

url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010218010003597?via%3Dihub},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.combustflame.2010.12.005},

year  = {2011},

date = {2011-07-01},

journal = {Combustion and Flame},

volume = {158},

number = {7},

pages = {1404-1412},

abstract = {As part of a study of the combustion of boxes of commodities, rates of upward flame spread during early-stage burning were observed during experiments on wide samples of corrugated cardboard. The rate of spread of the flame front, defined by the burning pyrolysis region, was determined by visually averaging the pyrolysis front position across the fuel surface. The resulting best fit produced a power-law progression of the pyrolysis front, xp = Atn, where xp is the average height of the pyrolysis front at time t, n = 3/2, and A is a constant. This result corresponds to a slower acceleration than was obtained in previous measurements and theories (e.g. n = 2), an observation which suggests that development of an alternative description of the upward flame spread rate over wide, inhomogeneous materials may be worth studying for applications such as warehouse fires. Based upon the experimental results and overall conservation principles it is hypothesized that the non-homogeneity of the cardboard helped to reduce the acceleration of the upward spread rates by physically disrupting flow in the boundary layer close to the vertical surface and thereby modifying heating rates of the solid fuel above the pyrolysis region. As a result of this phenomena, a distinct difference was observed between scalings of peak flame heights, or maximum “flame tip” measurements and the average location of the flame. The results yield alternative scalings that may be better applicable to some situations encountered in practice in warehouse fires.

},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{OVERHOLT2011317,

title = {Warehouse commodity classification from fundamental principles. Part II: Flame heights and flame spread},

author = {K J Overholt and M J Gollner and J Perricone and A S Rangwala and F A Williams},

url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0379711211000786},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2011.05.002},

issn = {0379-7112},

year  = {2011},

date = {2011-01-01},

journal = {Fire Safety Journal},

volume = {46},

number = {6},

pages = {317 - 329},

abstract = {In warehouse storage applications, it is important to classify the burning behavior of commodities and rank them according to their material flammability for early fire detection and suppression operations. In this study, a preliminary approach towards commodity classification is presented that models the early stage of large-scale warehouse fires by decoupling the problem into separate processes of heat and mass transfer. Two existing nondimensional parameters are used to represent the physical phenomena at the large-scale: a mass transfer number that directly incorporates the material properties of a fuel, and the soot yield of the fuel that controls the radiation observed in the large-scale. To facilitate modeling, a mass transfer number (or B-number) was experimentally obtained using mass-loss (burning rate) measurements from bench-scale tests, following from a procedure that was developed in Part I of this paper. Two fuels are considered: corrugated cardboard and polystyrene. Corrugated cardboard provides a source of flaming combustion in a warehouse and is usually the first item to ignite and sustain flame spread. Polystyrene is typically used as the most hazardous product in large-scale fire testing. The nondimensional mass transfer number was then used to model in-rack flame heights on 6.1\textendash9.1m (20\textendash30ft) stacks of ‘C’ flute corrugated cardboard boxes on rack-storage during the initial period of flame spread (involving flame spread over the corrugated cardboard face only). Good agreement was observed between the model and large-scale experiments during the initial stages of fire growth, and a comparison to previous correlations for in-rack flame heights is included.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}