Experimental study on cook-off performance of diesel fuel

In the present work we investigated the cook-off and combustion explosion properties of 76 L fuel tanks with -10^# diesel, fire-resistant diesel (FRD), fire-resistant-explosion-suppression diesel (FED) by performing experiments on the surface temperatures of the fire, the sizes of the jet fire, the internal temperatures of fuel tanks and the evaporation rate of the diesel using a video-camera, a high-speed camera, an infrared thermal imager, a thermocouples and an electronic balance. The results show that explosion might occur when the fuel tanks were filled with -10^# diesel and a jet fire would occur when the fuel tanks were filled with FRD or FED in the same cook-off conditions. The highest surface temperatures, the height of the jet fire, the vapor temperature and the fuel temperature of FRD were reduced by 31.39%, 75.34%, 39.05% and 57.32% respectively as compared with -10^# diesel. The highest surface temperatures, the height of the jetfire, the evaporation rate of the diesel, the vapor temperature and the fuel temperature of FED were reduced by 24.67%, 61.11%, 14.29%, 7.54% and 7.54% respectively as compared with FRD, indicating that FED was more effective than the other diesel in preventing temperature increase of the jet fire, size growth of the fireball and reducinge the diesel's evaporation rate.