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Article history:
Received 5 September 2010
Received in revised form
8 November 2010
Accepted 11 November 2010
Available online 18 November 2010
The challenge of a posteriori (i.e. after the event) modelling of a well characterized full-scale re test using
computational uid dynamics is illustrated in this work. Test One of The Dalmarnock Fire Tests was
conducted in a 3.5 m by 4.75 m by 2.5 m concrete enclosure with a real residential fuel load. It provides
measured data at the highest spatial resolution available from a re experiment to date. Numerical
simulations of the growth phase have been conducted with the numerical code Fire Dynamics Simulator
(FDSv4) while having full access to all the measurements. This includes description of the fuel load,
compartment layout, temperature and heat ux data, and camera footage. No previous re simulation had
this large amount of data available for comparison. Simulations were compared against average and local
measurements. The heat release rate is reconstructed from additional laboratory tests and upper and
lower bounds for the re growth are found. Within these bounds, the evolution of the average hot layer
temperatures in time could be reproduced with 10e50% error. Worse agreement with local measurements
of gas temperatures was achieved (between 20% and 200% error). Wall temperatures were predicted with
less than 20% error and wall incident heat uxes within 50e150% error. Largest discrepancy is seen close to
the ames. This level of agreement with the measured data was achieved after exploratory simulations
were conducted and several uncertain parameters were adjusted and readjusted while having full access
to all the measurements.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Compartment re
Experiment
CFD
LES
FDS
1. Introduction
Modelling of compartment res using computational uid
dynamics (CFD) has been a research topic since the introduction of
computational techniques in re science in the 1980s [1]. Only in
the last decade the available computational power and knowledge
of re dynamics have grown sufciently to carry out simulations
in real-size building enclosures, using grids that are ne enough
to reproduce re-driven ows reasonably well [2]. Since then, CFD
has been used extensively to model enclosure re dynamics [3e5]
both in research and in industrial applications. There are two
common industrial uses of CFD. One is for design of the re safety
strategies in the built environment (which results are rarely made
available for public scrutiny) and the reconstruction of accidental
res as part of forensic investigations (recent examples are the
2001 WTC [6] and the 2003 Station Nightclub [7] investigations).
The state of the art of re modelling is such that given a re of
known size and power (evolution of the heat release rate (HRR)),
CFD calculates the resulting temperature and smoke concentration
elds. The re source is therefore treated as an input into the model
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 44 131 650 7214; fax: 44 131 651 3576.
E-mail address: reingu@gmail.com (G. Rein).
0360-1323/$ e see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2010.11.001
1066
et al. [14] found temperature proles, smoke layer heights and gas
species concentrations in a 10 10 5 m compartment predicted
by FDSv4 to be in good agreement with experimental data for the
burning of pool res (heptane or toluene) and single cribs (PMMA
or wood). The measured mass loss rate of the fuel was used to
calculate the HRR, which was then input into the model.
The evaluation of the entire process of re modelling, in which the
mathematical model is only a component, is an important task for the
advancement of re safety engineering. The state of the art of re
modelling is reected not only in the mathematical models capabilities, but also on how it is implemented throughout the different
stages of re modelling [9]. The assumptions made by the user, the
collection of data for input and the selection of the parameter values
are crucial components leading to the creation of the input le. This is
particularly important when advanced and complex computational
tools are used (e.g. CFD and evacuation modelling). Under the current
state of the art, there are many ill-dened and uncertain parameters
within the models which cannot be rigorously and uniquely determined. Thus, there is plenty of space for uncertainty and doubt to
unravel, and for curve tting and arbitrary parameter value selection
to take place. This is summarised best in the words attributed to the
German scientist Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777e1855): Give me four
parameters, and I will draw an elephant for you; with ve I will have him
raise and lower his trunk and his tail.
This paper reports a series of CFD simulations (with FDSv4) conducted a posteriori to reproduce the large-scale Dalmarnock Fire Test
One that involved several real burning items leading to a complex re
spread process. The HRR of the growth phase was not measured. But
because the compartment was densely instrumented, it provides
a very rich set of data that could be used to aid dening the HRR of the
re source and uncertain parameters to reproduce the main features
of the re. A key difference between previous modelling studies of
large-scale tests and the present work is that the heavily instrumented full-scale Dalmarnock Fire Tests provides for the rst time
measurements at sufcient spatial resolution to be suitable for
comparison with eld models at the grid size level.
2. Dalmarnock Fire Test One
Detailed information about the experimental set-up and the
chain of events that occurred during the Test One can be found
elsewhere [15,16], but a short summary is given here. Test One was
held in a two-bedroom single family at, with the living room
set-up as the main experimental compartment. This compartment
was 3.50 m by 4.75 m wide and 2.45 m high and made of concrete
walls. It had two-pane windows as shown in Fig. 1. While the main
source of fuel was a two-seat sofa stuffed with exible polyurethane foam, the compartments also contained two ofce work
desks with computers, each with its own foam-padded chair, three
tall wooden bookcases, a short plastic cabinet, three small wooden
coffee tables, a range of paper items and two tall plastic lamps. A
plastic waste paper basket lled with crumpled newspaper and
300e500 ml of heptane was the ignition source. The re spread to
a blanket on the sofa hanging into the basket, igniting the seating
area of the sofa. After about 275 s the bookshelf next to the sofa
ignited and was rapidly engulfed in re. Within 25 s after ignition of
the bookshelf the compartment reached ashover conditions (see
Table 1 for a time line of the events).
Fig. 2 shows the HRR, the average temperature of the hot layer
and the vertical distribution of temperatures along one specic
thermocouple rack measured in Test One. A detailed presentation
of the data can be found in [15,16]. The HRR in the re tests was
estimated by the principle of oxygen depletion, using the
measurements from the gas velocity probes at all the ventilation
openings and assuming total O2 consumption [16]. An estimation
for the post-ashover re results in about 3 MW before the rst
window breakage, and about 5 MW after the second breakage as
shown in Fig. 2. During the growth phase the assumption of total
O2 consumption does not hold, as the re is not ventilation
controlled, thus the evolution of the HRR during re growth is
unknown.
Table 1
Time line of main events during Dalmarnock Test One [15,16].
Event
Ignition
Cushions ignite
Bookcase ignites
Fire engulfs bookcase (ashover)
Compartment window breakage (NW Pane)
Compartment window breakage (SW Pane)
Extinction
0
9
275
300
800
1100
1140
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Fig. 2. Measurements from the Dalmarnock Test One: a) estimated HRR (using oxygen consumption), b) average temperature of the hot layer in the main compartment (corrected
for radiation) and c) vertical temperature distribution in front of the compartment door at 600 s [15,16] (rack 4, see Fig. 1).
Fig. 3. Measured HRR for variations to the ignition source and equivalent t-squared res: a) measured in the laboratory prior to Test One including sofa and waste basket (Set 1);
and b) after Test One including the sofa, waste basket and blanket (Set 2).
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(1)
Fig. 4. Computational domain and fuel items used in the FDS simulations.
D*
$
2=5
Q
:
p
rN cp TN g
(2)
During the growth phase, the peak of the HRR is 300 kW, and
the characteristic diameter of the sofa is around 0.6 m. Hence the
grid size should be smaller than 11 cm for an adequate plume
resolution. This value is used as an order of magnitude reference. In
order to select an adequate grid size, simulation were run with
a wide range of different grid sizes: 5 cm, 10 cm, 15 cm and 20 cm
edge cubes. The 10 cm grid size resulted in 120,000 cells, and the
number of cells in other grids scales with the inverse of the cube of
the grid size. The HRR was prescribed according to the laboratory
experiment Set 1.
Fig. 5 shows the temperature vs. height distribution at two
different locations in the experimental compartment, one near the
burning sofa, and one near the window away from the re. See Fig. 1
for rack locations. The time of comparison is 140 s, and data are
averaged in time (10 s) in order to lter out inconsistent uctuations.
The simulations using coarser grids (15 and 20 cm) actually showed
better agreement when compared to the measured data, both
qualitatively and quantitatively than the ner grids (5 and 10 cm).
Near the re (Fig. 5a), the 20 cm and 15 cm grids are in agreement
between them and reproduce well the lower zone temperatures and
the smoke layer height, but overpredict the temperatures of the
smoke layer by 17%. The 10 cm grid underpredicts the smoke layer
height by around 15%, but is in good agreement regarding the smoke
layer temperature. The 5 cm grid underpredicts the measurements
by more than 35% at all heights. Away from the re (Fig. 5b), the 10,
15 and 20 cm grids are in reasonable agreement to the measurements, while the 5 cm grid shows divergence both quantitatively
(>30%) and qualitatively.
Based on this grid dependency study, the 10 cm grid was chosen
because it showed good comparison to the experiments, allowed
for fast computations and complied with the recommendation
associated to the characteristic re diameter [23,24]. Given the
present results, there are no good reasons to choose a different grid,
but most validation studies by the FDS developers had been conducted with similar grid sizes to this.
We cannot explain why the coarser grids in this case provide
lower global errors. While it is generally accepted for numerical
integration that a smaller grid yields more accurate results, FDS
results are known to depend signicantly on the size of the numerical
grid due to the LES approximation [25,24]. A possible explanation is
that the LES Smagorinsky constant used by default in FDS was calibrated to predict smoke movement in a very large enclosure and
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Fig. 6. Addition of the blanket to the HRR measured in Set 1 (Measured sofa re) to
obtain Set 1b (combined re).
away from the ames [26]. This is a very different scenario to the
Dalmarnock Test One and the constant might need recalibration.
All other parameters not discussed here were left with the
default values in FDSv4.
5. Hot layer average temperatures
Two distinct levels of detail are analysed. This section predicts
the average hot layer temperature while the next section looks at
the distribution of local eld temperature and wall heat uxes.
Comparison at detailed level requires a good agreement at averaged level rst.
As seen in the Set 1 and Set 2 experiments, the blanket signicantly modies the HRR. A possible HRR of the blanket alone can
be estimated assuming quadratic growth and decay phases. The
blanket, made of cotton, weighed 1 kg, hence the total combustible
energy stored in the blanket including 100 ml of accelerant can be
estimated to be around 21 MJ [22], assuming a heat of combustion
of 16.5 MJ/kg for the cotton. The resulting peak HRR would be
150 kW. This is not negligible compared to the measured HRR of
the sofa in the early stages, and should therefore be included
in the input HRR for the model. Fig. 6 shows the reconstructed HRR
of the blanket alone and its addition to the HRR of Set 1. The
Fig. 5. Comparison of results with different grid sizes at 140 s: a) distribution at the north wall next to the bookshelf (rack 1); and b) distribution near the window (rack 17).
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Fig. 7. Predicted average hot layer temperatures; a) Set 1; b) Set 1b and c) Set 2.
resulting HRR is referred to as Set 1b. Note that here the data is
shifted by 150 s compared to Fig. 3, so that the ignition occurs at 0 s.
The predicted hot layer average temperature using different
HRR and comparison to measurements are shown in Fig. 7. For the
Set 1 (Fig. 7a), the simulated hot layer temperature rise agrees with
the measurements during the rst 100 s. The predicted average
temperatures after t 100 s are lower that measured (up to 50%
error). For Set 1b (Fig. 7b), the simulated hot layer temperatures are
in good agreement with the measured temperatures (within the
instrumental uncertainty) until 200 s into the re. After that, the
simulated temperature decreases in contrast to the measured
temperature which rises continually until ashover. For Set 2
(Fig. 7c), the average hot layer temperature is overpredicted by
about 50% between 25 s and 100 s, and by about 35% between 150 s
and 250 s.
Overall, it is seen that Set 1 results in unrealistically low average
temperatures for the hot layer, but Set 1b and Set 2 provide predictions closer to the measurements. Thus, it is concluded that Set 1b
provides a lower bound to the HRR curve during the growth phase,
while Set 2 is an upper bound. This range captures the intrinsic
uncertainty of re growth in real complex scenarios and also includes
experimental variability. The uncertainty in the average temperature
predictions using these HRR bounds is between 0 and 50%. It conrms
that to predict temperatures with reasonable agreement, the HRR
must be well characterized.
Fig. 8. Temperature vs. height distribution at different locations in the compartment at 150 s (a, b and c) and 200 s (d, e and f). Thermocouple rack 7 (a, d) is located near the re,
rack 11 (b, e) is located near the centre of the compartment, and rack 19 (c, f) is located near the window. See Fig. 1 for rack location.
1071
Fig. 9. Wall temperature vs. height (a and c) and Heat ux vs. height (b and d) distribution on the wall of the re compartment against the kitchen at times 150 s (a and b) and 200 s
(c and d).
uxes. While the lower HRR bound produces heat uxes in the hot
layer close to the experimental error at 150 s, the upper HRR bound
overpredicts heat uxes in the hot layer by 20% and the cold layer by
100%. Fig. 9 shows that at 200 s the predicted wall heat ux with the
lower HRR bound is in reasonable agreement with the measurements, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The upper HRR bound
overpredicts of the heat uxes by 60e150%.
Fig. 10 shows the comparison of the distribution of heat uxes
on the ceiling along two perpendicular directions at two different
times. The simulated heat ux to the ceiling agrees with the
measured heat ux when using the lower HRR bound (within 20%
error). Using the upper HRR bound, the heat uxes to the ceiling are
consistently overpredicted (20e100%). The better predictions of the
ceiling heat ux compared to the wall heat ux (see Fig. 9) for the
lower HRR bound could be explained by the fact that the radiation
from the ame to the ceiling is reduced by the presence of the
smoke layer. The inaccuracies when modelling the ame could
have a smaller effect on the ceiling heat ux.
The difculty of modelling the near eld of the re on one hand,
and the relatively good agreement of the results away from the re
on the other, is consistent throughout this paper and with previous
work [9].
7. Conclusions
This work presents a detailed account of the a posteriori
modelling of Dalmarnock Test One. A very large pool of scenario
descriptions and measurements is used together with possible
HRR curves. Simulations were then compared against detailed
measurements, and uncertain input parameters were adjusted in
order to t the results. It was shown that even with full access to
the measurements, it is not easy to satisfactorily reproduce the
course of the re. Although averaged quantities were in reasonable
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Fig. 10. Heat ux to the ceiling compartment; a) and c) heat ux vs. longitudinal distance in the direction from the west window to the kitchen wall along the middle of the
compartment at 150 s and 200 s respectively. b) and d) heat ux vs. transversal distance in the direction from the south bedroom wall to the north wall along the middle of the
compartment at 150 s and 200 s.
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