Towards a collaborative research infrastructure for fundamental studies of turbulent fire phenomena

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

1604907 - Trouve The general objective of the research project is to build an international collaborative framework between computational and experimental researchers in the fire science community around the topic of the experimental validation of computer-based fire models. The fire science community is small, fragmented and geographically dispersed. The present project is an effort to meet the resulting organizational challenge, to promote high levels of integration and coordination, and to provide a critical mass of researchers for topics central to computational fire research. The project will build on established programs in the U.S. aimed at producing computer models for engineering analysis of building fires, e.g., the Fire Dynamics Simulator developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and FireFOAM developed by FM Global. The project will contribute data and software modules to a new open-access web-based repository, develop physics-based guidelines for computational best practices, and produce a new series of online tutorials for graduate-level students. The project will also advance fundamental knowledge and develop engineering-level tools for the generic problem of fire spread along solid flammable materials. The project is proposed as part of a new initiative led by the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS) called "the IAFSS Working Group on Measurement and Computation of Fire Phenomena" (or the MaCFP Working Group). On the technical side, the project will focus on the problem of turbulent wall flames supplied with fuel vapors produced by the thermal degradation of solid flammable materials. The project will include performing both fine-grained (research-level) and coarse-grained (engineering-level) large eddy simulations. Coarse-grained simulations will require the development of new wall models for turbulent boundary layer flames. The simulation software adopted in the project is the free open-source fire model called FireFOAM. On the organizational side, the project will support the MaCFP Working Group effort, develop an open-access web-based digital archive of well-documented numerical simulations corresponding to selected target experiments, help identify key research topics and knowledge gaps in computational and experimental fire research, develop best practices in computational fire research, contribute to the organization of the new MaCFP workshop series, and help develop an international network of fire researchers and a community-wide forum for discussion and exchange of information.