For a typical thermal runaway process of uncontrolled energy release, pool fires are typically associated with the safety of energy application in modern production and life. In order to improve fire safety in energy utilization, it is significant to investigate the disaster characteristics of pool fire incorporating mass burning flux and flame characteristic, which are fundamental parameters in hazard prediction and risk management. Although the disaster characteristics of pool fire under the free burning condition have been studied by lots of researchers, there are limited work about pool fire under the effect of obstruction. In order to explore the disaster characteristics of pool fire, 10 cm diameter n-heptane and ethanol pool fires with obstruction were performed, where the mass burning flux, flame appearance and flame radiation were measured and analysed. The experimental results show that the mass burning flux of the pool fire with obstruction decreases with the increase of obstruction height, and increases with the increase of the obstruction diameter. Based on the dimensionless theoretical analysis, a new correlation is further obtained from the experimental data of heptane and ethanol pool fires to describe the effect of obstruction. Besides, the obstruction above the fuel pool would lead to a larger peak value of the radiation heat flux. Using a physical method, prediction models for flame characteristics including flame width, flame height and maximum value of radiation heat flux were proposed. It is expected this work will help to understand the disaster characteristics of pool fires in a more realistic setting and to enhance the safety assessment for practical engineering applications.

Disaster characteristics; Pool fire; Circular obstruction;