Fire dynamics simulator (version 4) :

Abstract

The development and maintenance of the Fire Dynamics Simulator has been made possible through a partnership of public and private organizations, both in the United States and abroad. Following is a list of contributors from the various sectors of the fire research, fire protection engineering and fire services communities:The Fire Dynamics Simulator has been under development for almost 25 years. At NIST, Howard Baum and Ronald Rehm laid the theoretical groundwork for the model and devised the basic numerical solvers that are still used in the code today. Kevin McGrattan added features needed to make the model accessible to practicing fire protection engineers, and he remains the custodian of the FDS source code. Glenn Forney developed the visualization tool Smokeview that not only made the public release possible, but it also serves as the principal diagnostic tool for the continuing development of FDS. Kuldeep Prasad added the multipleblock feature of the model, paving the way for parallel processing. William (Ruddy) Mell has developed unique applications of the model in areas of microgravity combustion and wildland fire spread. Charles Bouldin devised the basic framework of the parallel version of the code.Several postdoctoral fellows at NIST have made significant contributions to the model development. Jason Floyd implemented the mixture fraction combustion model, Francine Battaglia studied the extension of the model to look at fire whirls, Javier Trelles extended the large eddy simulation technique to large, windblown fire plumes, Amy Musser considered indoor air quality applications along with her advisor Steve Emmerich of the Building Environment Division of BFRL, Dike Ezekoye worked on an early combustion model, Kevin Cassel used early versions of the model to study gravity currents/ceiling jets.In the labs at NIST, Anthony Hamins has conducted a number of small and large scale experiments to validate FDS, including a substantial set of experiments in response to the World Trade Center fires and collapse. Alex Maranghides oversees the Large Fire Laboratory at NIST where these tests were conducted, and has helped to design the experiments. Dick Gann has overseen the fire part of the WTC effort. Other participants in the WTC effort are

Lifts for Emergency Evacuation in Apartment Buildings

“…The Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) model [28] was used to determine the available safe evacuation time (ASET). The results are compared with the required safe evacuation time (RSET) for determining the impact on building occupants.…”

Spacecraft Fire Detection: Smoke Properties and Transport in Low-Gravity

“…FDS (version 4.0.7 Linux) is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model that numerically solves a form of the Navier-Stokes equations for low speed, thermally driven flow with an emphasis on smoke and heat transport from fires. 16 A detailed description of the theoretical equations, underlying assumptions, and numerical solution can be found in the technical reference guide. 17 For this application, large eddy simulation (LES) was utilized in which the large scale eddies are computed directly and the sub-grid scale dissipative processes are modeled.…”

“…The details of the model are discussed by Brooker et al 15 This study was conducted using FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator) a fire modeling program developed by McGrattan et al 16,17 at NIST. FDS (version 4.0.7 Linux) is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model that numerically solves a form of the Navier-Stokes equations for low speed, thermally driven flow with an emphasis on smoke and heat transport from fires.…”

CFD Study of Huge Oil Depot Fires - Generation of Fire Merging and Fire Whirl in (7 x 7) Arrayed Oil Tanks

“…Nevertheless, there have been few reports concerning fire merging and fire whirl generation in huge oil tank depots, and especially the physical characteristics of such disastrous fire phenomena has not been examined or even fully clarified. In view of these facts, in the previous studies of the authors [25,26], we conducted elementary analyses on the generation of fire merging and fire whirls in multiple huge oil tank fires by using CFD simulations based on the software of FDS v4 developed by NIST, in order to determine the conditions for the occurrence of these phenomena. Particularly, one problem is that large oil fires produce so much soot and thus the real heat release rate, contributing to the merging and swirling flows, remains uncertain.…”