Dry chemical fire suppression system discharge modeling and testing

An engineering method has been developed for calculating the blowdown of agent from a pressurized dry chemical fire suppression system supply cylinder, and the flow rate of agent through a piping delivery system. Its goal is to provide the means to determine the blowdown time and agent delivery capabilities of pre-engineered and simple engineered systems.; The method is based on the treatment of the two-phase powder-gas flow as an equivalent fluid with thermodynamic properties. The mixture is treated as compressible, and the expansion in the supply tank is assumed isentropic. A key assumption in the model is that the agent (powder) mass fraction remains constant, in both the tank and delivery system.; Predictions generated by the model were compared with test results. Cylinder alone gas-only discharge model predictions agreed well with test data for the full duration of tests using a discharge coefficient of 0.380 to characterize the gas flow through the dip tube/valve assembly; a simple isentropic analytical model gave a good prediction using a discharge coefficient of 0.430. Gas-solids predictions using a discharge coefficient of 0.500 agreed well with test data up to the observed inflection point near the end of discharge. This inflection point is caused by the agent in the cylinder reaching the bottom of the dip tube, resulting in reduced flow of agent from the cylinder, and thus reducing the mass fraction of the flow.; Cylinder-pipe-nozzle model discharge predictions for gas-only discharges agreed well with test data for the full duration of tests using a discharge coefficient of 0.470 for the 0.173-inch diameter nozzle used in the testing. Model predictions agreed well with the gas-solids mixture test data up to the inflection point, using a discharge coefficient of 0.999. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...