Computer based fire modelling techniques allow scientists to predict the fire growth and spread through buildings and other structures. There are two types of models in use, zone and field models.
Zone models divide the room in two homogenous control volumes: a hot upper layer and a cooler lower layer. The main deficiency of zone models is that because they divide the space into two homogenous layers, detailed, location-specific information cannot be ascertained from their use.
Fields models, also known as computational fluid dynamics models, divide the continuum into many homogenous cells and solve the fundamental mass, energy and momentum transfer for each cell. CFD models do an excellent job modeling fluid flows and motions between cells. We have used JASMINE, a special purpose CFD model in our project.
Field models have some disadvantages. One is that, even with today's fast computers, computational times are quite lengthy. Secondly, interpreting model results is difficult. CFD models often contain thousands of generate large volumes of data. This data needs organization, storage and interpretation. As a result, visualization techniques are a critical component for engineering analysis of CFD model results.
Here are some prototype visualizations.