Analysis of Heat and Smoke Propagation and Oscillatory Flow through Ceiling Vents in a Large-Scale Compartment Fire

One question that often arises is whether a specialized code or a more general code may be equally suitable for fire modeling. This paper investigates the performance and capabilities of a specialized code (FDS) and a general-purpose code (FLUENT) to simulate a fire in the commercial area of an underground intermodal transportation station. In order to facilitate a more precise comparison between the two codes, especially with regard to ventilation issues, the number of factors that may affect the fire evolution is reduced by simplifying the scenario and the fire model. The codes are applied to the same fire scenario using a simplified fire model, which considers a source of mass, heat and species to characterize the fire focus, and whose results are also compared with those obtained using FDS and a combustion model. An oscillating behavior of the fire-induced convective heat and mass fluxes through the natural vents is predicted, whose frequency compares well with experimental results for the ranges of compartment heights and heat release rates considered. The results obtained with the two codes for the smoke and heat propagation patterns and convective fluxes through the forced and natural ventilation systems are discussed and compared to each other. The agreement is very good for the temperature and species concentration distributions and the overall flow pattern, whereas appreciable discrepancies are only found in the oscillatory behavior of the fire-induced convective heat and mass fluxes through the natural vents. The relative performance of the codes in terms of central processing unit (CPU) time consumption is also discussed.