The numerical simulation of fire spread within a compartment using an integrated gas and solid phase combustion model

An integrated fire spread model is presented in this study including several sub-models representing different phenomena of gaseous and solid combustion. The integrated model comprises of the following sub-models: a gaseous combustion model, a thermal radiation model that includes the effects of soot, and a pyrolysis model for charring combustible solids. The interaction of the gaseous and solid phases are linked together through the boundary conditions of the governing equations for the flow domain and the solid region respectively. The integrated model is used to simulate a fire spread experiment conducted in a half-scale test compartment. Good qualitative and reasonable quantitative agreement is achieved between the experiment and numerical predictions.

Coupled 3-D finite difference time domain and finite volume methods for solving microwave heating in porous media

Computational results for the microwave heating of a porous material are presented in this paper. Combined finite difference time domain and finite volume methods were used to solve equations that describe the electromagnetic field and heat and mass transfer in porous media. The coupling between the two schemes is through a change in dielectric properties which were assumed to be dependent both on temperature and moisture content. The model was able to reflect the evolution of temperature and moisture fields as the moisture in the porous medium evaporates. Moisture movement results from internal pressure gradients produced by the internal heating and phase change.

A domain decomposition algorithm for inverse welding problems

A mathematical model and a numerical scheme for the inverse determination of heat sources generated by means of a welding process is presented in this paper. The accuracy of the heat source retrieval is discussed.

Electronic packaging and reduction in modelling time using domain decomposition

The domain decomposition method is directed to electronic packaging simulation in this article. The objective is to address the entire simulation process chain, to alleviate user interactions where they are heavy to mechanization by component approach to streamline the model simulation process.

Simulating the evacuation of very large populations in large domains using a parallel implementation of the buildingEXODUS evacuation model

Computer egress simulation has potential to be used in large scale incidents to provide live advice to incident commanders. While there are many considerations which must be taken into account when applying such models to live incidents, one of the first concerns the computational speed of simulations. No matter how important the insight provided by the simulation, numerical hindsight will not prove useful to an incident commander. Thus for this type of application to be useful, it is essential that the simulation can be run many times faster than real time. Parallel processing is a method of reducing run times for very large computational simulations by distributing the workload amongst a number of CPUs. In this paper we examine the development of a parallel version of the buildingEXODUS software. The parallel strategy implemented is based on a systematic partitioning of the problem domain onto an arbitrary number of sub-domains. Each sub-domain is computed on a separate processor and runs its own copy of the EXODUS code. The software has been designed to work on typical office based networked PCs but will also function on a Windows based cluster. Two evaluation scenarios using the parallel implementation of EXODUS are described; a large open area and a 50 story high-rise building scenario. Speed-ups of up to 3.7 are achieved using up to six computers, with high-rise building evacuation simulation achieving run times of 6.4 times faster than real time.