Smoke Characterization of Incipient Fire Sources for FDS Modeling

Abstract

This thesis describes the experimental and analytical methods used to characterize the heat and smoke release rates of eight different incipient fire sources. These characterizations are part of a larger effort to evaluate the current smoke detection prediction capabilities of the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) version 5.1.0. FDS is a computational fluid dynamics model of fire development based on the concept of large eddy simulation; the FDS model is under ongoing development at the Building and Fire Research Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The experimental aspect of this thesis includes developing a repeatable test protocol and characterizing each of the fuel sources. The experimental data produced from this phase is then input into FDS and the results of these simulations are compared to these experimental data. FDS has provided a range of accuracy near 5 % of the input values for smoke characteristics. The lag times associated with the output data can largely be attributed to the uncorrected experimental data. The time scaled inputs for FDS are based on the time that the instrumentation within the exhaust duct detected the smoke release from the material and the transport time required to move the smoke from the specimen to the instrumentation is not compensated for. Some variations in detection and data acquisition are expected.