NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF FIRE SPREAD ON POLYURETHANE FOAM SLABS

Published

March 17, 2009

Author(s)

Kuldeep R. Prasad, Roland Kramer, Nathan D. Marsh, Marc R. Nyden, Thomas J. Ohlemiller, William M. Pitts, Mauro Zammarano

Abstract

The NIST Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) is used extensively by the fire protection engineer for performance based design and forensic analysis. The equations of motion describing the gas phase are relatively well known and the approximations in the various gas phase sub-models have been extensively studied. However, coupling of the gas phase and the condensed phase to describe flame spread over a burning solid, has proven to be difficult to model. This is due to a lack of understanding of the underlying physical phenomena that take place during the decomposition of the solid as well as poor characterization of the fundamental material properties that control the burning process. The overall goal of this project is to improve the capability of FDS to predict flame spread over materials that typically burn in a compartment fire. In this paper, we attempt to simulate fire growth and spread on 4 thick slabs of polyurethane foam. A multi-layered, multi-material model was developed to model flame spread and material properties as input parameters were obtained from various small scale experiments. Model predictions were compared with large scale experiments on polyurethane foam slabs, ignited on one edge. FDS results indicate that the model is capable of qualitatively predicting the observed trends in heat release rate, flame spread rate and heat fluxes measured in the experiments. This report will describe the progress that has been made to-date on modeling fire growth and spread on polyurethane foam slabs and the comparison of these results with experimental data.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the Fire and Materials Conference

Conference Dates

January 26-29, 2009

Conference Location

San Francisco, CA

Conference Title

Fire and Materials 2009

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

polyurethane foam, numerical modeling

Citation

Prasad, K. , Kramer, R. , Marsh, N. , Nyden, M. , Ohlemiller, T. , Pitts, W. and Zammarano, M. (2009), NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF FIRE SPREAD ON POLYURETHANE FOAM SLABS, Proceedings of the Fire and Materials Conference, San Francisco, CA, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=901154 (Accessed October 10, 2025)