Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry Investigation of the Bidirectional Natural Convection Flow Through a Horizontal Vent

An experimental study investigates the natural convection flow through a horizontal ceiling vent of a fire compartment. This flow is governed by the buoyancy forces and the friction forces, and is bidirectional. The orifice used is of circular cross section and is characterized by the aspect ratio L/D of its thickness L over its diameter D. The reduced scale apparatus consist of two superimposed compartments of \(1.5 \times 1 \times 1 \, \mathrm{m}^3\) for the lower and \(1 \times 1 \times 1 \, \mathrm{m}^3\) for the upper. These two rooms are connected by a 0.038 m length circular orifice with different diameters available (\( D \in [63.5, \, 76.2, \, 127, \, 152.4, \, 190.5, \, 260\)  mm]). For the study of natural convection, only the lower compartment is used; the upper compartment is left at atmospheric conditions by removing all its walls. The temperature gradient (\(\Delta T \approx 50^\circ \)C between the bottom and the top of the orifice) is generated by a 2 kW electrical resistor located in the lower compartment. This electrical resistor makes it possible to generate, without mass inlet, a plume with no soot and to reach a thermal steady state in the “fire room”. The optical stereoscopic particle image velocimetry measurement technique provides the velocity field through the opening for different diameters. This technique, based on the finding of the displacement of a set of particles between two consecutive snapshots of a seeded fluid, makes it possible to obtain all three components of the velocity vector field by non-intrusive measurement. The use of this technique is a novelty for such vent flows and allows accessing information not only on the variation of the flow rate but also on the distribution of the fluids moving upward and downward through the orifice. Despite an unsteady dynamic regime, the analysis of averaged fields shows a geometrical organization of the bidirectional flow through the orifice, with a central area occupied by the hot fluid flowing upward and a peripheral zone where the cold fluid flows downward. The flow section occupancy ratio reverses with the extrema of flow velocities, for \(L/D \approx 0.41\).