Experimental and simulation study on the combustion fire spreading characteristics of aluminum composite panels with different thicknesses

To study the effect of thickness on the fire spreading characteristics of aluminum composite panels, a reduced-scale test bench was built to simulate the development of an overflow fire in a high-rise building. Analysis of the fire spreading characteristics was performed in terms of the flame shape, flame height, fire spread rate, and temperature change. Then, an Fire Dynamics Simulatior model was established to verify the accuracy of the experiment using numerical simulations. The results showed that the flame shape of the 3 and 4 mm aluminum composite panels was a triangular cone, while the flame shape of the 5 and 6 mm aluminum composite panels was approximately rectangular. By establishing the dimensionless flame height, the flame height increased with the panel thickness. The fire spread rate of the aluminum composite panels increased first and then decreased upon increasing the thickness, which was consistent with the simulation results. The temperature change curves all showed a rapid initial increase and then a stable temperature in the later period. The simulation results conformed well to the experimental results.