OpenFIRE: An Open Computational Framework for Structural Response to Real Fires

Abstract

More than 1300 new buildings over 200m tall have been built since the year 2000, representing 80% of the total number of supertall buildings globally. The proliferation of such challenging architecture in densely populated urban environments has led engineers to question the fitness of the prevalent prescriptive approaches in ensuring the safety of occupants in the event of a fire. This paper proposes a more rational methodology to estimate scientifically appropriate boundary conditions to represent realistic fire scenarios on the structure for more credible simulation of the consequent structural response using an integrated computational tool. An open-source framework, "OpenFIRE" is developed to implement the methodology. OpenFIRE is capable of simulating the whole sequence i.e., development of a fire scenario, heat transfer to the structure, and the thermomechanical response of the structure, through a sequential coupling of CFD tools with FE software. OpenFIRE exploits the capabilities of available tools such as FDS and OpenSEES and integrates them to produce a free, efficient, and open source computational framework which allows to customise and modify the source codes. It can bring structural fire community a step closer towards the adoption of performance-based designs (PBD). This framework is validated by comparing the thermal and structural responses of a square hollow section (SHS) steel column under fire with the experimental data. The critical parameters of the fire scenario produced by the framework are found in close agreement with the experimental data. The thermal and structural responses of the SHS column exposed to the developed fire scenario are also validated with test results in terms of structural temperatures, failure modes, and failure load.

Research on smoke control for an underground mall fire, based on smoke barrier and mechanical smoke exhaust system

“…According to this standard, a total of 7 monitoring points (A, B, C, D, E, F and G) are set at an interval of 11 m in the shopping mall corridor, which are 1.75 m away from the ground and monitoring points (J and K) are set at the exit channel to monitor the change law of flue gas parameters. The heat release rate curve of the fire source growth stage is t 2 type, the fire load density is set to 635 MJ/m 2 , the fire growth coefficient is 0.125, the maximum heat release rate is set to 5 MW, and the growth time is 200 s 22 .…”

Integrated nonlinear structural simulation of composite buildings in fire

“…Despite the tremendous development in both CFD and FEM modelling methods, the sequential coupling of both models is a challenging task mainly due to the difference in the spatial and temporal resolution of fire and structural domains. Over the last decades, considerable work has been done to couple FEM with CFD models [18][19][20][21][22][23]. More recent developments have also tackled niche areas such as tunnels [24,25], marine structures [22], and thin metal facades [26].…”