Heat transfer questions in fire science

Heat transfer is definitely one of the most fascinating and useful courses taught during the second year of the mechanical engineering program at Imperial College London. It is undoubtedly a must for any mechanical engineer. Nevertheless, until the 2020-2021 academic year, one of the most important fields of this subject was left out of the syllabus: fire science. Fire is a complicated phenomenon that introduces itself in the life of every engineer sooner or later. It is therefore crucial to know how to deal with fire and be able to conduct an analysis (even a basic one) concerning its behaviour. This document consists of a collection of fire science questions, accompanied by detailed solutions and explanations, that are going to integrate the heat transfer course taught in ME2. Most of the fire-related questions are taken from the 'Principles of heat and mass transfer' - global edition (Incropera, 2017) and 'An Introduction to Fire Dynamics' (Drysdale,2011) textbooks and cover topics included in the present syllabus. Solutions were written out for each question following the schematic learnt in class, as well as the one suggested by Incropera himself. In this way, students should find it easy to understand exactly what the thought process behind every step or calculation is and fully comprehend how to approach different types of fire-related questions