Thermal response of an unprotected structural steel element exposed to a solid rocket propellant fire

The thermal response of an unprotected structural steel element exposed to a solid rocket propellant fire is investigated. A 2 kg aluminized composite propellant Butalane® is positioned onto a 5 mm steel plate and ignited with a torch in the experiments. Radiative and convection-dominated heat transfer regions are observed, with the latter dominating the heating of the plate to a maximum of 820 K. Results obtained from thermal modeling reproduce the experiments well in terms of time evolutions of the structural element temperature.