Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

There is a need for fire modeling tools capable of rapid simulation of fire growth and smoke spread with complex ventilation in multiple compartments. Currently available tools are not capable of either the speed, the simulation of complex ventilation arrangements, and/or the ability to participate as a federate in a simulation environment. To address this, a new fire model was developed called FSSIM (Fire and Smoke SIMulator) [1]. FSSIM is a network model whose core thermal hydraulic routines are based on MELCOR [2]. FSSIM capabilities include remote ignition, multi-layer heat conduction, radiation streaming, HVAC systems, detection, suppression, oxygen and fuel limited combustion, and simple control systems. FSSIM was used to simulate four tests from the ex-Shadwell Submarine Ventilation Doctrine Tests. Excellent results are obtained in predicting the time-dependent temperature, visibility, and velocities.