Since serious fire occurred frequently in recent years, fire safety of high-rise building has attracted extensive attention. A National Basic Research Program (973 program) of China has been set up by Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of China in 2012 to meet the research requirements of fire safety in high-rise buildings. This paper reviews the current state of art of research on fire dynamics of high-rise buildings, including the up-to-date progress of this project. The following three subjects on fire dynamics of high-rise buildings are addressed in this review: the ejected flame and fire plume behavior over facade out of the compartment window, the flame spread behavior over facade thermal insulation materials, and the buoyancy-driven smoke transportation characteristics along long vertical channels in high-rise buildings. Prospective future works are discussed and summarized.
Trajectories of flying hot particles were predicted in this work, and the temperatures during the movement were also calculated. Once the particle temperature decreased to the critical temperature for a hot particle to ignite building insulation materials, which was predicted by hot-spot ignition theory, the distance particle traveled was determined as the minimum safety distance for preventing the ignition of building insulation materials by hot particles. The results showed that for sphere aluminum particles with the same initial velocities and diameters,the horizontal and vertical distances traveled by particles with higher initial temperatures were higher. Smaller particles traveled farther when other conditions were the same. The critical temperature for an aluminum particle to ignite rigid polyurethane foam increased rapidly with the decrease of particle diameter. The horizontal and vertical safety distances were closely related to the initial temperature, diameter and initial velocity of particles. These results could help update the safety provision of firework display.
