Investigation of a Fatal Fire in a Moving Vehicle
Date
2007Author
Alvares, Norman
Staggs, Kirk
Rein, Guillermo
Metadata
Abstract
This paper summarizes the essentials of an investigation conducted by the authors to test conflicting
scenarios regarding the cause and origin of an accidental fire. Fire investigators proposed that an
underbody fuel-leak ignited while the vehicle was in motion and transferred sufficient heat through
the steel floor to cause rapid, but undetectable, ignition and fire growth in the interior of the vehicle.
To assess the feasibility of the proposed scenario, a series of experiments were designed together with
the development of a priori modeling studies. The transient heating across the vehicle floor was
modeled, which allowed determining the characteristics for fire ignition inside the vehicle depending
on the scenario studied. The post-ignition regime was studied using computational fire modeling to
obtain an approximate time for smoke detection by the passengers. Results from these models
provided input to the design of experimental tests with a real-scale vehicle under a forced flow
imitating driving conditions. The tests showed that the only situation for which the scenario was
feasible was for the condition where unexpected perforations existed in the floor pan. In the case
where the floor pan did not contain perforations (as in the subject accident vehicle), heat transfer from
the under-floor flame was insufficient to cause ignition of interior materials.
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