Simulation of Fire Propagation in Cable Tray Installations for Particle Accelerator Facility Tunnels

Hehnen, Tristan; Arnold, Lukas; La Mendola, Saverio; van Hees, Patrick

Contribution to a conference proceedings/Contribution to a book

FZJ-2018-02071

Simulation of Fire Propagation in Cable Tray Installations for Particle Accelerator Facility Tunnels

Hehnen, T.FZJ* ; Arnold, L. (Corresponding author)FZJ* ; van Hees, P. ; La Mendola, S.

2018
RISE Research Institutes of Sweden AB Stockholm
ISBN: 978-91-88695-48-2

Proceedings from the 8th International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and Security
Eighth International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and Security, ISTSS 2018, Borås, Sweden, 14 Mar 2018 - 16 Mar 2018 Stockholm : RISE Research Institutes of Sweden AB 503 - 514 (2018)

Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/17753

Abstract: In this paper, it is demonstrated that the simulation of fire propagation in cable tray installations, with the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), version 6.3.2, can be achieved. A material parameter set allowing to estimate the fire spread, depending on environmental conditions close to the fire seat, was generated. The parameters are determined by utilisation of an evolutionary algorithm, in an inverse modelling framework, based on experimental data from Cone Calorimeter tests. As a further step, the performance of the parameter set is compared between the FDS versions 6.3.2 and 6.5.3.The foundation of this work are experimental results of the CHRISTIFIRE campaign. The inverse modelling approach is inspired by and based on Anna Matala’s and Chris Lautenberger’s work.A material parameter set generated by the evolutionary algorithm is then used in a real scale cable tray fire simulation to predict the fire propagation. The total heat release rate (HRR) of the cable tray simulation and the respective experiment are compared and are in good agreement. The major features in the HRR plot of the experimental data are visible in the simulation results, but slightly shifted in time. Thus, predicting the fire propagation in a simulation, based on data of small-scale experiments, seems possible with FDS.However, the parameters used in this work are model specific and very sensitive to changes in the model, like grid resolution and FDS version.

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