Development of a Coupled CFD-FEA Model for Whole Building Fire Performance Determination

该项目的成果将是全面建筑防火性能建模的新方法。消防安全是建筑性能的一个重要方面，建筑中使用的产品和系统受到建筑法规中规定的严格控制标准的约束。所有建筑产品都需要根据其在小规模防火测试中的性能进行欧洲防火分类。尽管火灾性能至关重要，但在该领域的工业计算建模能力非常有限，而且范围相当有限。目前，只有很少的小规模热力有限元分析（FEA）通常用于预测建筑构件在高温下的可能性能。监管要求往往主要侧重于生命安全，并引起了一些小规模的“着火试验反应”。这些测试纯粹是孤立地考察产品的性能，是有限元模型的主要数据来源。至关重要的是，这些测试并没有考虑到整个建筑的性能。因此，如果不进行昂贵的全面建筑物理实验，我们目前还不能完全了解新建筑材料在建筑中的表现。例如，在2017年6月格伦费尔大厦（Grenfell Tower）发生毁灭性火灾后，英国的《建筑法规》（Building Regulations）进行了修订，禁止在高层住宅建筑中使用18米以上的可燃材料。政府和保险部门的一些人主张，该禁令应进一步扩大到18米以下的高度，并包括非住宅建筑。这将对英国的某些制造业产生严重影响。全面的建筑防火性能建模将使政策制定者能够根据证据做出这类决策。该项目的目标是：通过结合CFD和FEA方法，将现有的、内部的、产品/系统建模能力扩展到整个建筑的防火性能建模。制定一套建模方法/架构，用以为各类建筑物建立完全耦合的cfd -有限元模型。为了比较，在各种火灾负荷下，在覆盖泡沫填充夹心板的仓库建筑物内可能的火灾传播与使用基于矿物羊毛的建筑系统和/或面板的类似设计的仓库中的火灾传播。比较含有可能替代泡沫材料的面板产品与现有产品的防火性能。调查与其他材料结合使用的复合板的大型组件和子组件的防火性能。

The output of this project will be new methods in full building fire performance modelling. Fire safety is a critical aspect of building performance and the products and systems that are used in construction are subject to tightly controlled standards that are specified in the Building Regulations. All construction products require a European reaction to fire classification that is based on their performance in small-scale fire tests. Despite the critical importance of fire performance, computational modelling capability within industry in this field is extremely limited and rather restricted in scope. Currently, only infrequent, small-scale thermomechanical Finite Element Analysis (FEA) are generally used to predict the likely performance of building components at elevated temperature. Regulatory requirements often focus primarily on life safety and have given rise to a number of small-scale 'reaction to fire tests'. These tests, which look purely at the performance of products in isolation, are the primary source of data for FEA models. Crucially these tests do not account for the performance of whole buildings. Therefore we currently do not fully understand how new building materials will behave in a building without performing expensive full building physical experiments. For example, following the devastating Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, the Building Regulations in England have been amended to include a ban on the use of combustible materials above 18m in high-rise residential buildings. There are those in government and the insurance sector who advocate that the ban should be further extended to heights of less than 18m and to include non-residential buildings. This would have a severe effect on certain manufacturing industries in the UK if enacted. Full building fire performance modelling would enable policy makers to make these sorts of decisions based on evidence.The objectives of this project are:To extend current, in-house, product/system modelling capability to whole building fire performance modelling by combining CFD and FEA methodologies.To generate a modelling method/framework that can be adopted to create fully coupled CFD-FEA models for a range of building types.To compare, at a variety of fire loadings, the likely fire propagation within a warehouse building clad with foam-filled sandwich panels with the fire propagation in a warehouse of similar design that utilises mineral wool-based built-up systems and/or panels.To compare the likely fire performance of panel products containing possible alternative foam materials with the performance of current products.To investigate the fire performance of larger assemblies and sub-assemblies of composite panels used in conjunction with other materials.