Visualization and Modeling of Smoke Transport Over Landscape Scales

Published

May 1, 2007

Author(s)

Glenn P. Forney, William E. Mell

Abstract

Computational tools have been developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for modeling fire spread and smoke transport. These tools have been adapted to address fire scenarios that occur in the wildland urban interface (WUI) over kilometer-scale distances. These models include the smoke plume transport model ALOFT (A Large Open fire plume Trajectory model) and WFDS (Wildland-urban interface Fire Dynamics Simulator) for fire spread and smoke transport in the wildland-urban interface. The visualization tool is called Smokeview. In this paper, an overview of the physical basis of the fire spread and smoke transport models will be discussed briefly along with the visualization of characteristic results using Smokeview. A technique will be described for visualizing smoke realistically and indications will be given how Smokeview can be applied to other fire models.

Citation

NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR) - 7428

Report Number

7428

NIST Pub Series

NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR)

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

CFD models, field models, fire simulation, scientific visualization, visualization

Citation

Forney, G. and Mell, W. (2007), Visualization and Modeling of Smoke Transport Over Landscape Scales, NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=861439 (Accessed October 20, 2025)