Students Produce Fire Simulation of the FPE Department Space
As part of a senior project during the Spring 2009 term, fifteen Undergraduate Fire Protection Engineering (FPE) students worked with Professor Arnaud Trouvé to produce several representative computer simulations of an hypothetical fire occurring in the FPE Department space on the 3rd floor of the J.M. Patterson Building. The simulations were performed using fire modeling software, FDS and Smokeview, developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The geometry of the FPE Department space was incorporated into a FDS input file starting from a CAD drawing and a third-party CAD-to-FDS utility. The flammable objects and materials, such as desks, tables, chairs, bookshelves, computers, books, and stacks of paper, were also included in the FDS input file along with an estimate of their burning properties.
The students were organized in several groups with separate responsibilities and objectives, for instance:
- the modeling of the HVAC system
- the modeling of the water mist fire protection system
- the modeling of window breakage
- the completion of several simulations using the University of Maryland parallel Linux cluster called deepthought
- an analysis of compliance of the FPE Department space to existing Fire Protection building codes
The selected fire scenario was based on the supposed ignition of a couch located in a corner office (Professor Jim Quintiere’s office). The different simulations produced in the course of the project describe the subsequent flame spread and smoke movement across the 3rd floor of the J.M. Patterson Building, with or without actuation of the water mist system. In the absence of the water mist system, the fire reaches flashover conditions in a matter of minutes and spreads through most of the FPE Department space. In contrast, with actuation of the water mist system, the fire is controlled and contained to the space around Professor Quintiere’s office.
The senior project provided a unique and exciting learning experience to students and a great introduction to the power and limitations of current fire modeling tools.
