Practical LES modelling of jet fires: Issues and challenges

Jet fires represent a major risk in the process industry and it is a growing trend to use Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models to achieve a better description in realistic scenarios. In this work, a process of validation was undertaken to investigate the capabilities of Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS) in representing a jet fire. In particular, a medium scale subsonic propane jet fire was simulated with the purpose of analysing two main parameters (mesh dependency and initial unmixed fraction of the reactants). Results of different simulations were compared with the experimental data to highlight model performance and limitations.