A technical reference for CFAST :

Abstract

CFAST is a zone model capable of predicting the environment in a multi-compartment structure subjected to a fire. It calculates the time evolving distribution of smoke and fire gases and the temperature throughout a building during a user-specified fire. This report describes the equations which constitute the model, the physical basis for these equations, data which are used by the model, and details of the operation of the computer program implementing the model. The means by which one can add new phenomena are detailed, as are the variables and structure of the model.A set of comparisons between the model and a range of real-scale fire experiments is presented. In general, the CFAST model compares favorably with the experiments examined in this report. Although differences between the model and the experiments were clear, they can be explained by limitations of the model and of the experiments.

Influence of Draft Curtains on Sprinkler Activation -- Comparison of Three Different Models

“…It can be seen that for the sprinklers closest to the center line (sprinklers 1, 2, 5, 6, 9,10), there is a good fit to the correlation by Motevalli and Marks, but for the sprinklers further away (sprinklers 3,7,11,4,8,12) and close to the edges at the side, the ceiling jet is thicker. The reason for such a result is the vortex created when the ceiling jet hits the sides of the raised ceiling.…”

“…This is the case for the zone models BRANZFIRE [2] and Argos [3], whereas the probably most well known zone model CFAST [4] uses the approach by Cooper [5]. Beyler [6] studied several different empirical ceiling jet formulas, including Alpert's formula.…”

Fire modelling and structural assessment of automated clad‐rack warehouses

“…In particular, the focus was on the fire spread from an initial fire in rack storage to adjacent racks without any suppression system. The test program presented in the report [18], consisted of six different test series: These tests were simulated by using the software CFAST (Jones et al 2006) [20] developed by NIST which is a twozone fire model that predicts the thermal environment caused by a fire within a compartmented structure, allowing to model different compartments which can communicate to each other. to model the vertical propagation of a localized fire, the Test 5 which consists of the study of the vertical and horizontal fire propagation in a group of four racks was simulated.…”

CFAST- consolidated model of fire growth and smoke transport (version 5) :

“…The effective resistance between two nodes is always positive, however, sometimes one of the resistances between nodes can be negative as will be explained later. To account for this, R = K ½ can be substituted into eq (74) to give ti The total pressure loss, )p , from one node to the next is the sum of the losses, )p , through each flow element, i, between the nodes.…”