5/22/2018 Fire sprinkler hydraulic calculations and design density

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Fire sprinkler hydraulic calculations and

design density
 Category: Hydraulic calculation for re protection engineers (/Table/Support/Hydraulic-calculation-for- re-protection-engineers/)

In re sprinkler design one of the most important concepts is the principal of water density yet many re sprinkler system design engineers do not fully
understand the concept, this sort instruction will hopefully full ll this requirement.

We often refer to Design Density in lazy preference to Design Density of Discharge which, in turn, is a short way of saying Density of Application of
Water. This is an unusual use of the word 'density' since we know, of course, that the density of water is 1. The density of application, however, means
how much water we apply over a certain area, much the same as pressure is a force applied over a unit area.

We are, therefore talking about a volume of water spread over a certain area in a unit of time.

Volume can be measured in litre

Area can be measured in m2
Time can be measured in minutes

The density of water application would be measured thus:

Volume / Area x Time or Litre / m3 x min

It is necessary to bring this formula to a manageable state by changing the units. As a Litre of water is de ned as cubic decimetre which is 10
centimetres × 10 centimetres × 10 centimetres, (1 L ≡ 1 dm3 ≡ 1000 cm3). Hence 1 L ≡ 0.001 m3 ≡ 1000 cm3 and 1 m3 (i.e. a cubic metre, which is the
S.I. unit for volume) is exactly 1000 L.

Therefore, we can rewrite the formula:

dm x dm x dm / 10dm x 10dm x min

This can be simpli ed by cancelling out

dm / 100min = 100mm / 100min = 1mm / 1min = mm/min

The density of application can, therefore, be measured in millimetres per minute (mm/min).

Whichever route you take, it is important to realise that when we use this strange, apparently linear unit, we are talking about a volume of water
discharged over an area of 1m2 in 1 min.

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 In the case of Ordinary Hazard Installations (EN 12845) with
5/22/2018 a sprinkler
Fire Density ofhydraulic
Discharge of 5.0 mm/min
calculations bearing
and design in mind that this really means 5 L/min2/min
density
then we are applying less than half a bucket full of water on every square metre each minute.

The art, of course, is how you tell it or, in this case, how you apply it. The sprinkler head distributes the water in an even pattern so that in the case of
OH3, each of the 12m2 covered by the head receives its share of water. When testing a sprinkler head the oor is covered with 1m2 trays and after a
discharge for 1 minute, there should be water in each tray to a depth of 5mm. The volume of water in the tray would be 5mm x 1000mm x 1000mm =
5,000,000mm3. Since there are (100 x 100 x 100) ie. 1,000,000mm3 in 1dm3 the volume of water will, of course, be 5dm3 or 5 litres.

Taking OH3 as an example, if we design for a maximum of 18 sprinkler heads operating each capable of covering 12m2, then the maximum area of
operation will be (18 x 12)m2 = 216m2.  If each of the 18 sprinkler heads is discharging 5dm3/m2 every minute then we will require a ow of (5 x 18 x
12)dm3/min = 1080dm3/min. In calculating pipe sizes this is approximated to 1000dm3/min.

Now we know the theory of 'Design Density' we can use it in are re sprinkler hydraulic calculations to nd the quantity of water required to ow from a
re sprinkler. If we know the area a sprinkler head is covering and the required design density then we can use the following formula:

Area x Density = Quantity

Therefore if we have a re sprinkler head which is covering 8m2 and we require 12.5 mm/min

8m2 x 12.5 mm/min = 100 Litres/min

This would be the minimum ow rate required for the sprinkler head to prove the correct Design Density.  The speci c design density to be used for
design purposes is determined by reference to the occupancy re hazard of the building once this is known the applicable design standard such as EN
12845, BS 9251 or NFPA 13 will have tables of occupancies from which you can nd the required design density.

A practical design density example

Let’s take an example, if we are designing a re sprinkler system and we know that we required a design density of 15.0 mm/min over the design area
then this is the starting point for our re sprinkler hydraulic calculation.

We now need to take the rst most remote re sprinkler on the branch line (range pipe) and nd the actual area the re sprinkler is covering let’s assume
it’s 7.5m2 for this example. We can now calculate the minimum ow rate from the re sprinkler to provide the required design density, this can be found
from the equation:

            Q = D x A

When:

Q = ow rate from the re sprinkler

D = Design density
A = Area of coverage for the re sprinkler

For our example:

            15 mm/min x 7.5m2 = 112.50 L/min

We now know that the most remote re sprinkler must have a ow rate which is equal to or greater than than 112.50 L/min.

The next step in the calculation is to check that we can get this ow rate from the re sprinkler and what pressure will be required.

We hope you have found this short introduction to water design density to be informative and that it will help you understated one of the fundamental
concepts of sprinkler system design.  

 
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 Footnotes:
5/22/2018 Fire sprinkler hydraulic calculations and design density
The litre is the SI derived unit for volume which is the volume of a cube with 10 cm sides and has the symbol L or l. A decimeter (dm3) is 1,000 cubic
centimetre(cm3) or 1/1000 of a cubic metre.

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