Compartment fire modeling

Abstract

An approach for predicting various aspects of fire phenomena in compartments has been called zone modeling. Based on a conceptual representation for the compartment fire process, it is an approximation to reality. Any radical departure by the fire system from the basic concept of the zone model can seriously affect the accuracy and validity of the approach. The zone model represents the system simply as two distinct compartment gas zones: an upper volume and a lower volume resulting from thermal stratification due to buoyancy. Conservation equations are applied to each zone and serve to embrace the various transport and combustion processes that apply. The fire is represented as a source of energy and mass manifested as a plume, which acts as a pump for the mass from the lower zone to the upper zone through a process called entrainment.