Facility for repeatable fire testing

In support of the Lightweight Air-Transportable Accident Resistant Container (LAARC) program, a pool fire facility has been developed that provides a repeatable fire environment. This testing capability proved invaluable during the development phase of the LAARC package in that design changes could be evaluated with respect to the abnormal thermal environment without resorting to a statistical approach. The facility has since been used for a wide variety of fire tests including the development of fire instrumentation for the Department of Transportation Engulfing Fire program (1), the pursuit of an in-house heat transfer in fire study (2), and the thermal testing of TRUPACT container components (3). The purpose of this paper is to describe the facility, give the theory of operation, and discuss the relation between the thermal environment inside the facility and that in an open pool fire