Use of Monte Carlo Simulation to assess uncertainties in fire consequence calculation

Abstract

Over the past years, ro-ro/passenger ships and cruise liners have been involved in several accidents/incidents, including fire. In response to this, the IMO has adopted a series of amendments to SOLAS Convention to ensure the non-reoccurrence of such accidents. In contemporary fire safety design of ships, computer fire models can be utilised to estimate the consequences of fire scenarios on the life safety of crew/passenger on board. The available safe egress time (ASET) from a fire scene is of paramount importance when assessing life safety. The utilised fire model asks for input data that some of them have stochastic nature and may be subjected to uncertainty. The most common technique used to explore the effect of propagation of uncertainty from the random inputs into the predicted ASET is the Monte Carlo Simulation. This work presents the results obtained from combining this technique with a fire model while prediction the ASET for four different fire scenarios that involve typical ship layouts commonly found in accommodation spaces aboard ro-ro/passenger ships and cruise liners. The results indicated that ASET is always affected by uncertainties propagated from the random inputs, with the time to reach untenable condition due to fire toxicity being the most severely affected output in almost all examined cases.