Jintaek Kim
The Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology, vol. 23, no. 7, pp.1877-1884, 2009

Abstract : If fire breaks out on an airplane, a large amount of fire extinguishing agents should be discharged within a very short time. For effective fire extinguishing, increased discharge velocity of the fire extinguishing agents is required. This can be achieved by using a large-sized vessel in which the fire extinguishing agents are highly pressurized by noncombustible gases. It is important to understand the flow characteristics of a fire extinguishing system for optimal system design. This study reports a numerical analysis of the flow characteristics of an airplane fire extinguishing system using halon-1301 as a fire extinguishing agent. The unsteady flow model was simulated with the general-purpose software package "FLUENT", to study the flow characteristics of the fire extinguishing agents in the system. The effects of the rupture surface area and tube diameter on the flow characteristics were investigated for optimal system design. From the analysis results, it was clarified that the characteristics of the halon discharge from the end of tube are very sensitive to the rupture surface area and significantly affected by the tube diameter.

Keyword : Aircraft fire extinguishing system; Fire extinguishing agent; Halon-1301; Flow characteristics; Numerical analysis