Parameterising study of tunnel experiment materials for application to the Fire Dynamics Simulator pyrolysis model

Abstract

The pyrolysis model in Fire Dynamics Simulator version 6.1.2 is applied to numerically describe the decomposition and burning behaviour of two materials (wood and plastic) used to construct pallets as the fuel load in a large-scale tunnel fire experiment. The kinetic parameters for the wood and plastic are derived from thermogravimetric analyser experiments using genetic algorithm multiple-component scheme, hand calculation multiple-component scheme and genetic algorithm one-component scheme. The kinetic parameters along with other related thermal properties are used to simulate a series of cone calorimeter experiments. Results from these simulations found that the use of the different component schemes has a significant influence on the decomposition and burning behaviour predictions in Fire Dynamics Simulator version 6.1.2. However, irrespective of the component scheme, the burning behaviour prediction of the solids is also dependent on the thermal property settings. The predictions of the heat release rate curves are not always comparable to the cone calorimeter experimental curves under different external heat fluxes when a consistent set of thermal properties is used. The best results are obtained at incident heat fluxes of 35 kW/m2 for the plastic samples and 25 kW/m2 for the wood samples such that these are sufficient to enable simulation of the large-scale tunnel fire experiment in future work.