What is an optical flame detectors field of view?
All flame detectors have between 90 up to 120 cone of vision. One can assume that the wider the cone of vision the more area the detector can cover. However this is both misleading and in many cases totally incorrect!! In the case of the IR3 detector which has a 100 cone of vision but can see a 1x1sq.ft (0.1 m3) fire at a distance of 215 feet (65 m) – the area the detector can cover is far greater (six times) than that of a detector with a 120 degree cone of vision which can only see the same size fire at 50 ft (15M)! Most flame detectors are placed in the corner of a structure so as to get maximum coverage along both walls and into the area. In this scenario the additional 30 degree is meaningless as it is outside the walls of the building.
