A Zone Model in Simulating Water Mist Suppression on Obstructed Fire

A zone model is proposed for studying the obstructed fire suppression by a total flooding water mist system in a chamber with different ventilation conditions. This is a one-zone thermal model mainly for simulating scenarios where oxygen consumption and dilution by water evaporation are the main fire extinguishing mechanisms. The water flow rate and volume mean diameter of a droplet has been used to characterize the water mist system. The fire is taken as a heat source, and its heat release rate is related to oxygen consumption. Mass and energy conservation equations for gaseous species in the enclosure under fire have been solved. Fire suppression is predicted by investigating the limit of oxygen concentration. Numerical results are verified by two sets of experiments on water mist fire suppression system reported in the literature. The predicted results agreed qualitatively with the experiments. In addition, the predicted results by this model are also compared with other existing models. Factors affecting the fire extinguishment mechanism are analyzed, and the limitations of the model are discussed.