Thermal decomposition of solid fuels. Objectives, challenges and modelling

Abstract

The progress of computing means, the complexity of the situation concerning fires, the need to describe with more accuracy all the different phases of the fire behaviour (such as the ignition, its growing, its extinction…) has led to a great effort in the past few years of the international research community to improve the performance of the numerical simulation codes. Those codes consist of different sub-models in order to simulate the different physical, thermal and chemical aspects of the fire, such as the thermal decomposition.This one plays a significant role on the fire evolution since it represents the fuel quantity that supplies the combustion process. Then, the requirement of a more detailed characterization and description is one actual and important challenge. This is the challenge of this keynote lecture which is dealing with thermal decomposition of solid fuels in the conditions of fire, addressing both the experimental investigations and the modelling development aspects.After a presentation of the objectives and challenges of thermal decomposition, this lecture details the different steps required for its description, based on an experimental and numerical scaling-up approach. Examples of application are done. Special focus is highlighted on different scientific bolts and issues for thermal decomposition modelling.