Air movement in a big hall induced by a fire in a "bare cabin" was simulated using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Applying CFD in simulat ing fire-induced air flow in buildings would require specification of free boundary conditions. Improper description of the free boundary conditions would give very different results. Three free boundary conditions commonly used were tested. Three sets of big hall geometry including two bare cabin designs and five heat re lease rates of fire of 20 kW m-1, 40 kW m -1, 60 kW m-1, 80 kW m-1, and 100 kW m-1 were considered. The self-developed program CY-TEAM modified from TEAM was selected as the simulator. Further, the commercial software CFX4.2 was used to compare with part of the results predicted by CY-TEAM. This gave a total number of 60 simulations.
Results predicted from all these different geometries, conditions and software were compared. It is concluded that the free boundary condition should be specified carefully in simulating fire-induced air flow with CFD.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Chow, W.K."Simulation of fire environment for linear atria in Hong Kong"ASCE Journal of Architectural Engineering, 3(2), pp. 80-88, 1997.
2.
Fire Services Department, Code of practice for minimum fire services installationsHong Kong, 1994.
3.
Chow, W.K."FSD circular letter no.13/88: A comment"The Hong Kong Engineer —November, pp. 19, 1989.
4.
Law, M."Fire and smoke models—their use on the design of some large buildings"ASHRAE Transactions, 96(1), pp. 963-971, 1990.
5.
Beever, P."Cabins and islands: a fire protection strategy for an international airport terminal building"Third International Fire Safety Science Symposium, IAFSS,Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K ., pp. 709-718, 1991.
6.
Beever, P."Design in international airport terminals" Fire East '95 Conference and Exhibition, Hong Kong, 7 November 1995, pp. 4.1—4.5, 1995.
7.
Bressington, P."Railway link to Chek Lap Kok" Fire East '95 Conference and Exhibition, Hong Kong, 7 November 1995, pp. 5.1-5.8, 1995.
8.
Chow, W.K. and Wong, W.K."Atria fire record and simulation on their fire environment using the zone model FIRST"The Hong Kong Engineer, December, pp. 20—26, 1992 .
9.
Sung, K.L."Reliability study of sprinkler system"—Final Year Research Project, BEng (Hons) in Building Services Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,1998.
10.
Lam, C.M."Fire safety strategies: new Chek Lap Kok international airport" Asiaflam'95, Proceedings International Fire Conference on Fire Science and Engineering, held in March 1995, Hong Kong, Inter Science Communication Ltd., London (U.K.) pp. 63—68, 1995.
11.
"Chek Lap Kok terminal blaze"South China Morning Post, 30 April, 1998.
12.
Chow, W.K."A preliminary study on the fire protection aspects of the new airport terminal building"Journal of Applied Fire Science, 6(4), pp. 327-338, 1996.
13.
Chow, W.K."On the cabins' fire safety design concept in the new Hong Kong airport terminal buildings"Journal of Fire Sciences, 15(5), pp. 404-423, 1997.
14.
Chow, W.K."Author's responses to comments by Law and Beever on: A preliminary study of the fire protection aspects of the new airport terminal building"Journal of Applied Fire Science, 7(3), pp. 323-327, 1998.
15.
Chow, W.K."Responses to comments by Law and Beever on the paper 'On the cabins—fire safety design concept in the New Hong Kong airport terminal building' "Journal of Fire Sciences, 16(3), 154-156, 1998.
16.
Spalding, D.B."Mathematical modelling of fluid mechanics, heat transfer and chemical reaction processes" Computational Fluid Dynamics Unit Report No. HTS/80/1Imperial College of Science & Technology, London, U.K., 1980.
17.
Patankar, S.V."Numerical heat transfer and fluid flow"McGraw-Hill, N.Y, 1980 .
18.
Awbi, H.B."Ventilation of buildings"E & FN Spon, London, 1991.
19.
Chow, W.K. and Leung, W.M."A short note on achieving comergent results in simulating building fire using the k-ε turbulent model"Numerical Heat Transfer , Part A, 17(3), pp. 495-501, 1990.
20.
Chow, W.K. and Fong, N.K."Application of field modelling technique to simulate interaction of sprinkler and fire-induced smoke layer"Combustion Science and Technology , 89(2), pp. 101-151, 1993.
21.
Markatos, N.C. , Malin, M.R. and Cox, G."Mathematical modelling of buoyancy-induced smoke flow in enclosures"International Journal of Heat Mass Transfer, 25(1), pp. 63-75, 1982.
22.
Huang, P.G. and Leschziner, M.A."An introduction and guide to the computer code TEAM" Research Report, UMISTManchester, U.K., 1984.
23.
Chow, W.K. and Yin, R."Numerical verification of scaling laws for smoke movement in room-corridor structure"ASCE—Journal of Architectural Engineering , 4(2), pp. 52-64, 1998.
24.
"CFX4.2: user manual"CFX International, AEA Technology, Harwell, Oxford, U.K., 1997.
25.
Yang, K.T."Recent development in field modelling of compartment fires"JSME International Journal, 37(4), pp. 702-717, 1994.
26.
McGrattan, K.B., Baum, H.R. and Rehm, R.G."Large eddy simulation of smoke movement"Fire Safety Journal, 30(2), pp. 161-178, 1998.
27.
Davidson, L."Second-order corrections of the k-ε model to account for non-isotropic effects due to buoyancy"International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 33(12), pp. 2599-2608, 1990.
28.
Chow, W.K. and Mok, W.K."CFD simulations in compartment fire with four turbulence models"Research Report, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University , 1998.
29.
Chen, Q."Comparison of different k-ε models for indoor air flow computations"Numerical Heat Transfer Part B, 28(2), pp. 353-369, 1995.
30.
Cheung, YL"A critical evaluation on the study of sprinkler and hot-air layer interaction with Computational Fluid Dynamics" PhD Thesis—The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, 1997.
31.
Minkowycz, W.J. , Sparrow, E.M., Schneider , G.E. and Pletcher, R.H."Handbook of numerical heat transfer"John Wiley, New York, 1988.
32.
Issa, R.I."Solution of the implicitly discretised fluid flow equations by operator-splitting"Journal of Computational Physics, 61(1), pp. 40-65, 1985.
33.
Tuovinen, H."Simulation of combustion and fire-induced flows in enclosures" Report LUTVDG/(TVBB-1010): PhD Thesis at the Department of Fire Safety EngineeringInstitute of Technology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden , 1995.
34.
Luo, M. and Beck, V."The fire environment in a multi-room building—com— parison of predicted and experimental result"Fire Safety Journal , 23(3), pp. 413-438, 1994.
35.
Lewis, M.J., Moss, M.B. and Rubini, PA"CFD modelling of combustion and heat transfer"Fire Safety Sciences, Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium, pp. 463-474, Edited by Y Hasemi, Tsukuba, Japan, International Association for Fire Safety Sciences, 1997.
36.
Yau, Z. and Holmstedt, G."CFD and experimental studies of room fire growth on wall lining materials"Fire Safety Journal, 27(3), pp. 201-238, 1996.
37.
Van Doormaal, J.P. and Raithby, G.D."Enhancements of SIMPLE method for predicting incompressible fluid flows"Numerical Heat Transfer, 7(2), pp. 147-163.
38.
"Lan Kwai Fong tragedy"South China Morning Post, 2 January, 1993.
39.
Ingason, H. and Olsson, S."Interaction between sprinklers and fire vents (full scale experiments RANDFORSK project 406-902)" Fire Technology SP Report 1992: 11Swedish National Testing and Research Institute, Sweden , 1992.
40.
Cui, E., Chow, WK, Yuan, L.M. and Li, P.D."Preliminary experimental studies on atrium smoke with a new full-scale burning facility" Eurofire '98,11 to 13 March 1998, Brussels, Belgium, paper presented, 1998.
