Definition Marginal States of Irrigated Firefighting Barriers

Major fire emergencies generating high thermal loads go along with intensive convective and thermal flows. One of the ways to address the problem is to provide firewalls for industrial enterprises. This paper examines how water-irrigated firewalls can be used as protection from heat radiation and related factors of danger. A firewall is an assembled vertical enclosure made of thermal-insulation sandwich panels. A thermal-insulation sandwich panel consists of two meshed surfaces, with water injected between them by special spray nozzles. The irrigation system for thermal-insulation sandwich panels includes spray impact-jet slot-type nozzles with a blade reflector, the nozzles are serially connected through the trunk pipeline. To address the objectives, the following marginal states were controlled: Loss of heat insulating capacity (I) and loss of integrity (E). The test also examined the marginal state for loss of heat-insulating capacity (W). Because the panel is irrigated with spray nozzles, we used an infrared imager to control regularity of such irrigation and that of temperature distribution over the sample surface. Our research found that such firewall can be used as protection against thermal radiation and related fire hazards. After the test, the water-irrigation firewall design was awarded fire resistance level of EIW 150 for standard fire emergency. The results of infrared imaging confirmed the results of TEC registered on the unheated surface of the firewall; they also demonstrated existence of certain areas, where irrigation is incomplete, causing heating to 341.5°C at one point. This means that the system has to be further improved.