Try Flame Diverters to Protect Towers from Fires

Try Flame Diverters to Protect Towers from Fires

Since heated air and flames rise directly upward, they can rapidly attack all floors above the initial burning floor exterior.  So the question arises whether flame diverters can be added to towers that can be extended from the exterior sides of a tower, to divert the vertical flame flow away from sides of the tower.  These diverters can be placed, say, at every of the floors divisible by 10.  Many questions have to be answered by building full scale models of at least a dozen floors and testing them, varying several parameters, materials, cooling and designs.

As an example, the diverters can be flat along the sides of the tower, and then deployed at perhaps a 45 degree angle from the vertical.  If the diverters are say at 90 degrees, then it seems too easy for the heated air and flames to flow horizontally back to the tower.  On the other hand, for a 45 degree diversion, the expanding air may still expand and return to the tower after a certain number of floors.

Rather than making a model to illustrate a deployable tight form of diverters, I simply refer to flat colanders that can spread apart with expanding petals that hold vegetables for steaming.

The next problem, is that the diverters have to be cooled and stabilized from the upward force of the flames that they are diverting.  Water must be injected to cool the bottom and absorb the heat by evaporation.  The connection of the diverters to the building will also heat the building at the joints and could start fires themselves, as well as the concentration of the flames at the joints with the tower.

Another possibility is just to blow air out of the tower in the direction of the fire to push it away.  However, any opening into the building could be dangerous.

I didn’t claim that the diverter idea actually had a workable solution.  But it could be easily investigated and ruled out if it fails.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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