Students Produce Fire Simulation of the FPE Department Space

As part of a senior project during the Spring 2009 term, fifteen Undergraduate Fire Protection Engineering (FPE) students worked with Professor Arnaud Trouvé to produce several representative computer simulations of an hypothetical fire occurring in the FPE Department space on the 3rd floor of the J.M. Patterson Building. The simulations were performed using fire modeling software, FDS and Smokeview, developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The geometry of the FPE Department space was incorporated into a FDS input file starting from a CAD drawing and a third-party CAD-to-FDS utility. The flammable objects and materials, such as desks, tables, chairs, bookshelves, computers, books, and stacks of paper, were also included in the FDS input file along with an estimate of their burning properties.

For more information, click here: http://www.fpe.umd.edu/research/simulations-patterson/

Published July 21, 2009