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Fires in booths or kiosks on the bottom floor of an atrium space lead to fire spreading to the booths and kiosks one after another, resulting in multiple flame sources and/or flame merging. The airflow in the atrium will create fire whirls from multiple burning locations. Whether the merging of fire whirls in the atrium will present an unacceptable fire hazard has not been adequately studied. We report the results obtained from an examination of flame height behavior as multiple fire whirls merged in small-scale fire tests. The flame behavior determined from the experiments was compared with McCaffrey’s model, which divides the temperatures and upward flow of the flame center line into three regions of continuous flame, intermittent flame, and buoyancy plume from a pool fire or a sand gas burner. The strong and stable merging fire whirl expanded the continuous flame region, as determined by comparing the temperature attenuation on the center line with that of McCaffrey’s model. As to the contribution to changes in flame height, the distance between fire sources is more dominant than the entrained air amount from air inlets. Our results provide useful information for determining the quantification of the parameter of flame height associated with the fire whirls for merging multiple flames.

International Seminar on Fire and Explosion Hazards (9; 2019; Saint Petersburg, Russia). Proceedings of the Ninth International Seminar on Fire and Explosion Hazards [Электронный ресурс]: 21-26 April 2019, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Vol. 1 / Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Autonomous Non-Profit Organization "Fire and Explosion Safety", Gefest Holding Ltd ; [edited by A. Snegirev [et al.]. — Электрон. текстовые дан. (1 файл : 118 Мб). — Saint Petersburg, 2019. — Загл. с титул. экрана. — Свободный доступ из сети Интернет (чтение, печать, копирование). — Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0. — <URL:http://elib.spbstu.ru/dl/2/k19-45.pdf>. — <URL:http://doi.org/10.18720/SPBPU/2/k19-45>.