ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Therm. Eng.
Sec. Thermal Behavior of Materials & Structures
Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fther.2025.1560746
This article is part of the Research TopicCurrent Challenges in Fire Safety: Strategies and InnovationView all 3 articles
A Comparative Study of Cable Fire Dynamics: Bench-Scale Experiments and Numerical Simulations with and without Fire Retardant Coating
Provisionally accepted
Mahesh Kumar Tiwari1,2*
Raj Kumar Mishra3
Ankit Dasgotra4Ankit Sharma5Akhil Gupta3Mukut Kumar Meena3Ravi Kumar3Pavan Kumar Sharma6- 1Muscat College, Muscat, Oman
- 2International College for Engineering and Management (ICEM), Muscat, Oman
- 3Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India
- 4University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
- 5Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
- 6Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
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Cable fires are one of the primary causes of fire hazards in nuclear power plants (NPPs) and warehouse buildings. This paper presents a study on the experimental and numerical analysis of cable failure with and without fire-resistant coating. The experiments were conducted in two sets under two different average heat fluxes, ranging from 15 (13-15) kW/𝑚 2 to 20 (17-20) kW/𝑚 2 . A total of ten experiments were analysed, with five varying fire-resistant coating thicknesses from zero to 0.8 mm for each heat flux value. For the power cable without coating, under an average heat flux value of 15 kW/𝑚 2 , the failure time was recorded as 1897 seconds. Furthermore, the core and outer sheath temperatures corresponding to the same heat flux values were recorded at 282.60 °C and 353.90 °C, respectively, at the time of failure. For the power cable without coating under the heat flux value of 20 kW/𝑚 2 The failure time was recorded as 991 seconds; the core and outer sheath temperatures were recorded at 223.16 °C and 310.16 °C, respectively, at the time of failure. Correlation for both heat fluxes was established, holding very closely within a 2% variation compared to experimental results. COMSOL Multiphysics software is used to perform the numerical simulation. The simulation result under the heat flux value of 15 kW/𝑚 2 without coating for cable failure time, core temperature and outer sheath temperature was found to be 1898 s, 333.37 ℃ and 361.83 ℃, respectively. Under heat flux value of 20 kW/𝑚 2 for power cable without coating, the simulation result obtained for cable failure time, core temperature and outer sheath temperature was found to be 990 s, 212.73 ℃ and 256.45 ℃, respectively. The absolute mean deviation for outer sheath numerical validation is 9.94%. The absolute mean deviation for the core numerical validation is 14.19%. The simulation result shows good agreement with the experimental results. These values will help to get to know about the burning characteristics of the cable and the failure time of the cable.
Keywords: Power cable, Fire retardant coating, heat flux, Critical thermal stress, Temperature gradient
Received: 14 Jan 2025; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tiwari, Mishra, Dasgotra, Sharma, Gupta, Meena, Kumar and Sharma. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mahesh Kumar Tiwari, Muscat College, Muscat, Oman
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