Due to the fast devel­op­ment in com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy, Com­pu­ta­tion­al Flu­id Dynam­ics (CFD) has become an accept­ed tool in fire safe­ty engi­neer­ing (RiMEA-guide­line, GFPA-guide­line).
Since the phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na of flu­id dynam­ics and fire are very com­plex, some of these effects are mod­elled. The effect of tur­bu­lence, pyrol­y­sis or ther­mal con­duc­tion are still mod­elled but not cal­cu­lat­ed in a small scale. Due to that, results are obtained fast. Against that, a huge amount of val­i­da­tion work is need­ed to pro­vide capa­ble results. For this val­i­da­tion, results of real fire tests are required. IFAB has a mas­sive fire test data base avail­able from full scale tests, so it is able to ver­i­fy the CFD mod­els against exper­i­men­tal data in most cas­es. With its huge expe­ri­ence in fire test­ing, IFAB can gen­er­ate need­ed val­i­da­tion data by itself if data is not avail­able. This sets IFAB apart from orga­ni­za­tions that use CFD with­out val­i­da­tion.

Exam­ples for CFD sim­u­la­tions are:

– Smoke and tox­ic gas dis­tri­b­u­tion
  • Proof of func­tion for smoke and heat vent­ing sys­tems
  • Analy­sis and opti­miza­tion of smoke and heat vent­ing sys­tems
  • Cal­cu­la­tion of avail­able safe egress time (ASET)
  • Cal­cu­la­tion of detec­tion times of smoke detec­tors

– Sim­u­la­tion of ther­mal dis­tri­b­u­tion
  • Proof of part capa­bil­i­ty
  • Deter­mi­na­tion of ther­mal input to objects and humans
  • Cal­cu­la­tion of detec­tion times of heat detec­tors

– Effect of fire-fight­ing sys­tem
  • Proof of effi­cien­cy
  • Opti­miza­tion of set­ting

– Sim­u­la­tion of evac­u­a­tion
  • Cal­cu­la­tion of required safe egress time (RSET)
  • Analy­sis and opti­miza­tion of escape paths
  • Proof of escape path effi­cien­cy
  • Influ­ence of heat, smoke and tox­ic gas­es on evac­uees

– Sim­u­la­tion of design fire curves
  • Deter­min­ing the heat release rate (HRR) of rail vehi­cles