An experimental and non-dimensional study on the vertical temperature distribution of a sealed ship engine room fire

Fire in a sealed ship engine room is different from open fires, while its suppression is critically important to the emergency rescue and structure safety for a ship. This study focused on the vertical distribution of temperature rise during a sealed engine room fire. A series of experiments were carried out to investigate fire behaviors in a reduced-scale sealed ship engine room with a dimension of 3 m (length) × 3 m (width) × 3.5 m (height). The results suggested that there are vertical temperature gradients of smoke layer, showing a little lower than those of open fires. The experimental results demonstrated that the time to reach the maximum temperature is different for smoke layers at various heights, while a lower height showed a relatively long delay time. The vertical gradient of temperature rise was found increasing with pool diameter where the gradient of temperature rise of a 30 cm pool fire is about 9 times of that of a 10 cm pool fire. Furthermore, an empirical model was developed to predict the vertical temperature rise distribution along the height at the time of the maximum temperature for sealed engine room fires.