BENCH-SCALE FLAMMABILITY EXPERIMENTS: DETERMINATION OF MATERIAL PROPERTIES USING PYROLYSIS MODELS FOR USE IN CFD FIRE SIMULATIONS

摘要

This paper describes a combined experimental and modelling effort with the goal of developing amethodology for determining solid fuel material properties to be used as inputs in CFD simulations ofintermediate- and large-scale fires. Pyrolysis experiments were carried out in a Fire PropagationApparatus (FPA) for practical charring materials, namely single-wall corrugated cardboard andchlorinated polyvinyl chloride (CPVC). The tests covered a wide range of heat fluxes (20-110 kW/m~2),representative of those encountered in a fire scenario. These data are used to extract material propertiesnumerically by coupling a theoretical 1-D pyrolysis model to an automated optimization algorithm inwhich material properties are varied so that the best possible agreement between model outputs andexperimental data is obtained. Optimization is performed using the Shuffled Complex Evolution (SCE)methodology. The approach is shown to be highly efficient and robust through application to syntheticdata.