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Development of Combustion and Radiation Models for Large Scale Fire Simulation

Published

Author(s)

Kevin B. McGrattan, J E. Floyd, Glenn P. Forney, Simo A. Hostikka, Howard R. Baum

Abstract

In cooperation with the fire protection engineering community, a numerical fire model, Fire DynamicsSimulator (FDS), is being developed at NIST to study fire behavior and to evaluate theperformance of fire protection systems in buildings. Version 1 of FDS was publicly released inFebruary 2000. To date, about half of the applications of the model have been for design ofsmoke handling systems and sprinkler/detector activation studies. The other half consist of residen-tialand industrial fire reconstructions. Throughout its development, FDS has been aimed primarilyat the first set of applications, but it is now clear that some improvements to the fundamental algorithmsare needed to address the second set of applications. The two most obvious needs arefor better combustion and radiation models to handle large fires in relatively small spaces, likescenarios involving flashover.
Citation
Third Technical Symposium on Computer Applications in Fire Protection Engineering

Keywords

combustion model, fire model, large eddy simulation, radiation transport

Citation

McGrattan, K. , Floyd, J. , Forney, G. , Hostikka, S. and Baum, H. (2001), Development of Combustion and Radiation Models for Large Scale Fire Simulation, Third Technical Symposium on Computer Applications in Fire Protection Engineering, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=861483 (Accessed October 5, 2025)

Issues

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Created September 13, 2001, Updated February 17, 2017
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