Preliminary Examination of Uncertainty in Material Flammability Properties on Compartment Fire Characteristics

摘要

The current debate on the impact and use of rame retardant chemicals presents an opportunity tornexplore how changes in small scale burning test data au000bect loss estimates on structure scales. This paperrndiscusses an exercise in which small changes in the properties of burning items are computationallyrnpropagated to determine if they impart a statistically signifcant signature in property loss after a frernhas occurred within a structure. Many diu000berent factors au000bect the overall property loss associated withrnany given ignition event. The statistical nature of fre loss requires careful exploration of the nonlinearrncoupling of the various factors that underlie the loss. As a means of evaluating these issues, a Direct MonternCarlo approach is implemented in the Consolidated Model of Fire Growth and Smoke Transport (CFAST)rncode to explore the potential impacts of changing fre parameters on the hot gas layer temperature andrnlayer height in a single compartment. Uniform distributions are assumed for descriptive fre parametersrnpeak heat release rate and growth time, which are in turn used to create simple triangular fres. Initialrnresults indicate a sizable level of complexity in the layer height and hot gas layer uncertainty over therntime space even in a single compartment. For a given time slice in the simulation, uncertainty in hot gasrnlayer temperature and layer height can vary substantially between the examined parameter spaces despiternrelatively small perturbations in parameter properties.