The problem of heat transfer to walls from fire-plume-driven ceiling jets during compartment fires is introduced. Estimates are obtained for the mass, momentum, and enthalpy flux of the ceiling jet immediately upstream of the ceiling–wall junction. An analogy is drawn between the flow dynamics and heat transfer at ceiling-jet/wall impingement and at the line impingement of a wall and a two-dimensional, plane, free jet. Using the analogy, results from the literature on plane, free-jet flows and corresponding wall-stagnation heat transfer rates are recast into a ceiling-jet/wall-impingement-problem formulation. This leads to a readily usable estimate for the heat transfer from the ceiling jet as it turns downward and begins its initial descent as a negatively buoyant flow along the compartment walls. Available data from a reduced-scale experiment provide some limited verification of the heat transfer estimate. Depending on the proximity of a wall to the point of plume–ceiling impingement, the result indicates that for typical full-scale compartment fires with energy release rates in the range 200–2000 kW and fire-to-ceiling distances of 2–3 m, the rate of heat transfer to walls can be enhanced by a factor of 1.1–2.3 over the heat transfer to ceilings immediately upstream of ceiling-jet impingement.
