Fire Suppression Modeling

Project Description

FireFOAM is a state-of-the-art fire modeling code that emerged from a collaborative effort led by FM Global. FireFOAM has been applied to industrial-scale fire-suppression studies to help guide full-scale fire test design. The Director’s Discretion Award allocation could make high fidelity full-scale fire suppression simulations possible.Show quoted textThe proposed study can help improve fire protection guidelines for modern roll paper storage facilities. The largest scale that can be tested in the FM Global Large Burn Lab is a 12.5 (42 ft) high array under an 18.2 m (60 ft) high ceiling. Currently, we do not have appropriate fire protection solutions for higher arrays. Fire suppression modeling becomes the only solution to evaluate the fire protection design for these high array storage configurations.For water mist, the proposed study aims at developing physics based models to help evaluate performance in open space fires. The GPU spray modeling helps reduce the computational cost. The expertise gained from this project will help us improve the code performance in the future (e.g. GPU based radiation model).
The sprinkler injection modeling will allow research to gain increased understanding of sprinkler dynamics and improve the fidelity of fire modeling simulations. Results will feed directly into simulations to provide guidance to the industry on fire protection in a wide range of scenarios.