Revista: Applications in Energy and Combustion Science
Autores: Calderón, I.; Majdalani, A.; Arnold, L.; Jahn, W.
Fecha: 2025
Abstract
This study investigates the flow field development in compartment fires through experimental validation and computational analysis. Using the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), numerical models of a nearly cubic compartment were validated against experimental data under varying ventilation conditions and heat release rates, showing good agreement in well-ventilated regimes and larger discrepancies under ventilation-controlled conditions. Once validated, the models were used to explore non-cubic geometries, revealing that changes in compartment depth and height significantly alter flow patterns, stratification, and the position of the velocity neutral plane. These results demonstrate that the regime classification based solely on the inverse opening factor is insufficient to describe fire behaviour in geometrically diverse compartments. Instead, the interaction between ventilation and burning modes governs the compartment fire regime of behaviour, as proposed by previous framework. This work highlights the importance of incorporating geometric effects in performance-based fire design and showcases the utility of CFD simulations for analysing complex flow phenomena beyond the reach of experimental techniques.
Keywords
Fire safety; Compartment fire; CFD; Well-ventilated fires
