A Global Model for Heat Release Rate Prediction of Cable Burning on Vertical Cable Tray in Different Fire Scenarios

Cable fire risk analysis is important for fire protection design in  industrial as well as residential buildings. The vertical movement of the cable burning area along the vertical tray is one of the unique characteristics in vertical cable tray fire. Heat release rate (HRR) prediction is important for the fire hazard assessment. In this study, a model for estimating the HRR of the vertical cable tray fire in full scale was developed on the basis of a bench-scale cable burning test. For a given unit area of burning cable, a correlation was established between a cable fire on a vertical tray in full scale and a cable burning test in bench scale. Furthermore, the developed model takes into account the effects of the cable spacing, number of cable trays, and confined room on the cable fire behavior in full scale. Compared with the available experimental results in the literature, the local error of the predicted maximum HRR was less than 9.4%, which is significantly lower than previous model predictions in the literature. Evidently, the developed model can more accurately estimate the HRR of the vertical cable tray fire.