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An Experimental and Numerical Study on the Effects of Leakages and Ventilation Conditions on Informal Settlement Fire Dynamics

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Abstract

The one billion people that currently reside in informal settlements are exposed to a high and daily risk of large conflagrations. With the number of informal settlement dwellers expected to increase in the years to come, more systematic work is needed to better understand these fires. Over the past 3 years to 4 years, researchers have explicitly started investigating informal settlement fire dynamics, by conducting full-scale experiments and numerical modelling research. It is with this background that this paper seeks to investigate the effects of leakages and ventilation conditions on informal settlement fire dynamics. Three full-scale informal settlement dwelling experiments were conducted in this work. The experiments were kept identical with only a small change to a ventilation or leakage condition from experiment to experiment. During each experiment the heat release rates, heat fluxes, temperature and flow data were recorded and are given in this paper. B-RISK’s (a two-zone model software) predictive capabilities are then benchmarked against the full-scale experiments. B-RISK is then used to conduct a parametric study to further investigate the effects of leakages and ventilation on informal settlement dwelling fire dynamics. It was found that the ventilation conditions can significantly affect the radiation emitted from an informal settlement dwelling, and as a result increase or decrease the probability of fire spread to neighboring dwellings.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge Breede Valley Fire Department and two undergraduate students, Monique Scheepers and Kyle Stebbing, from Stellenbosch University for their contribution and assistance towards helping the authors successfully complete the experiments. This work is financially supported by IRIS-Fire GCRF project from the UK (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Grant no.: EP/P029582/1), the Lloyd’s Register Foundation under the “Fire Engineering Education for Africa” project (Grant GA 100093).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Antonio Cicione, Richard Walls, Zara Sander, Natalia Flores & Vignesh Narayanan

  2. School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3JL, UK

    Sam Stevens & David Rush

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  1. Antonio Cicione
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  2. Richard Walls
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  3. Sam Stevens
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  4. Zara Sander
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  5. Natalia Flores
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  6. Vignesh Narayanan
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  7. David Rush
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Correspondence to Antonio Cicione or David Rush.

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Cicione, A., Walls, R., Stevens, S. et al. An Experimental and Numerical Study on the Effects of Leakages and Ventilation Conditions on Informal Settlement Fire Dynamics. Fire Technol 58, 217–250 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-021-01136-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-021-01136-8

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