Abstract
Flashover is a phenomenon describing a room fire changed from the 'growth stage' to the 'development stage'. There is a rapid increase in size and intensity. In this paper, the gas fire flashover caused by the leakage of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is studied by using a series of reduced-sale compartments. The effects of different sizes of compartments and velocities of LPG leakage on flashover are discussed. The results show that the bigger the size of compartment is, the later gas fire flashover occurs; and in the same compartment the larger the velocity of gas leakage is, the earlier the gas fire flashover occurs. Furthermore, this paper presents a new criterion number c_f to describe the probability of gas fire flashover. The result is that if c_f is more than the upper critical value, it's most probable that gas fire flashover occurs and if c_f is less than the lower critical value, it is almost impossible that gas fire flashover occurs.
