doi:10.3850/978-981-08-7724-8_04-02

ABSTRACT

FireFOAM, a new fire modeling code based on the OpenFOAM platform, is developed and applied to model both thermal and fire plumes. LES of a thermal plume corresponding to Shabbir and George's experiment [1] is performed. Detailed comparisons of centreline and radial self-similarity profiles for the first and second order turbulent statistics are presented. For reacting flow, a series of purely buoyant fire plumes corresponding to McCaffrey's experiments [2] is simulated, with an emphasis to evaluate the results in terms of scaling of various important model outputs such as temperature, velocity, flame height and entrainment. The simulation results show good quantitative agreement with experimental measurements in all aspects examined. This demonstrates that FireFOAM is adequate for modelling buoyancy-driven flow and performs well for buoyant fire plumes.

Keywords: FireFOAM, OpenFOAM, LES, Pool fire, Thermal plume.

© 2011 CPD Unit, University of Leeds