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Pool Fire — Burning Rate and Heat Release Rate
Calculates the burning rate and heat release rate of a fuel pool using the Babrauskas correlation, from fuel constants the user enters together with their source.
Pool geometry
Fuel constants
This tool supplies no values for these constants and offers no list of fuels. They are material-dependent and appear in copyrighted tables, so every value is entered by you together with the source you took it from.
The mass loss rate per unit area in a very large pool.
Required. The tool does not supply this value, and a result resting on a value with no source is marked as undocumented.
Sets how quickly the rate converges on the asymptotic value as the diameter grows.
Required. The tool does not supply this value, and a result resting on a value with no source is marked as undocumented.
The heat of combustion in practice, after combustion efficiency.
Required. The tool does not supply this value, and a result resting on a value with no source is marked as undocumented.
Validity range
Validity range
The conditions that determine whether the correlation applies. Crossing them changes the state of the result.
- The correlation was measured for pools in which burning is controlled by radiation from the flame. Below a diameter of 0.2 m burning is controlled by conduction from the rim — a different regime. The result is shown with a warning.
- A zero or negative diameter, or a non-positive value for any of the constants, does not define burning at all. In those cases no number is shown.
Model limits
What the model does not describe, even within its validity range. These always hold.
- The correlation gives the heat release rate in the steady burning phase, not during ignition or decay.
The equation
Q̇ = ṁ"∞ · (1 − e^(−kβ·D)) · (π·D²/4) · ΔH_c,eff
- Q̇ [kW]
- Heat release rate
- ṁ"∞ [kg/m²·s]
- Asymptotic burning rate
- kβ [1/m]
- Extinction-absorption coefficient
- D [m]
- Pool diameter
- ΔH_c,eff [kJ/kg]
- Effective heat of combustion
Babrauskas — SFPE Handbook 5th ed., Heat Release Rates
Result
Missing dataA value is missing that you can supply here and now.
No result was calculated. The details are below.
To complete the calculation the following are missing:
- ṁ"∞ — asymptotic burning rate
- kβ — extinction coefficient
- ΔH_c,eff — effective heat of combustion
Source of the equation
Babrauskas, SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering, 5th ed. — the chapter "Heat Release Rates".
Only the equation was taken from the source. Its fuel property tables are neither used nor reproduced in this tool.
Your data is stored in this browser alone and is never sent to Hoshen or to anyone else.
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