Numerical analysis of pool fire consequences in confined environments

In this paper, a critical comparison between model predictions obtained with the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) and experimental measurements of pool fires in confined environments, such as those in road tunnels, has been performed. The use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in this field can be useful especially for the development of fire protection systems and for designing adequate ventilation systems and defining necessary escape routes. For this reason, different pool fire scenarios have been considered; preliminarily, several simulations have been carried out taking as a reference few experimental tests related to small pool fires in confined environments available in the literature. These tests have been performed in rooms with different geometries, evaluating the influence of the fire position on the smoke and fire dynamics, the role of fire heat release, but also of the presence of doors and windows; this allows to validate the computational code and to perform a sensitivity analysis on the role of different parameters such as the grid size, the boundary conditions, the choice of the computational domain, etc. Then, experimental tests obtained in a full-scale road tunnel have been modeled; for all the analyzed cases, FDS has made a good description of the experiments, evidencing in particular a good agreement between model predictions and experimental measurements. The successful comparison between the model and the experimental results further support the use of this code for the simulation of fire dynamics and for the evaluation of the risk associated with fires in confined environments and in road tunnels.