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Study of Upward Flame Spread on Inclined Surfaces

Document Summary

A report into the "trench effect", which caused the fire at King's Cross underground station to develop much more rapidly than would normally be expected.

This document was published on 1st January 1996 by Health and Safety Executive.

It was written by Y. Wu and D. D. Drysdale.

This item is linked to the Accident at Kings Cross on 18th November 1987

The original document format was PDF File, and comprised 99 pages.

This document was kindly sourced from Unknown and is in our Technical documents collection. It was added to the Archive on 23rd October 2006.

Copyright Information

This document is Crown Copyright, and is subject to the terms governing the reproduction of crown copyright material. Depending on the status and age of the original document, you may need an OPSI click-use license if you wish to reproduce this material, and other restrictions may apply. Please see this explanation for further details.

"This report describes work carried out in the Unit of Fire Safety Engineering, University of Edinburgh, into the mechanism of the rapid fire growth which occurred during the escalator fire at the King's Cross Underground Station on 18th November 1987. This has come to be known as the "trench effect". The approach to the problem involved both an experimental investigation and CFD analysis using FLOW3D. Experimentally, four factors were identified as important parameters for the occurrence of the effect: (i) the slope of the trench; (ii) the geometrical profile of the cross section of the trench: (iii) the nature of the combustible material from which the trench has been constructed: and (iv) the ignition source. A series of experiments designed to examine the influence of the first two factors separately was carried out: this also provided data to test the validity of the CFD simulations. The inclination angle was varied between 10 and 30 degrees. The movement of the buoyant flow in the vicinity of the heat source was simulated and the results compared with the experimental data. The agreement was very satisfactory. Both the experiments and the CFD simulations showed there to be a critical angle for the "trench effect" to occur. The results of both the experiments and the CFD simulations are summarised in this report."

Timeline:
Accident at Kings Cross on 18th November 1987

21st October 1988
Investigation into the King's Cross Underground Fire

1st January 1996
Study of Upward Flame Spread on Inclined Surfaces

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