Time to flashover for fires in a ‘bare cabin’ with smoke extraction system

Fires in ‘cabins’ with only the smoke extraction system operating were studied. Cabins of length up to 10m, width up to 8m and height up to 5m, with different ventilation conditions under a NFPA t2-fire with a cut-off value of 5 MW were investigated. The fire environments due to all the four sets of slow, meduim, fast, and ultra fast t2-fires were tested. The fire zone model FIREWIND was selected as the simulation tool. The total number of simulations was 14,400, including four smoke exhaust rates. The time to flashover was computed for two different times of operation of the smoke extraction system. It is found that without operating the sprinkler system, flashover would occur under many conditions with the time to flashover as fast as 200 s.