Numerical simulations on the performance of waterbased fire suppression systems

This publication summarizes a three-year research project with a goal to improve and enhance the capabilities of the NIST Fire Dynamics Simulator to describe water spray dynamics, discharge of large water based fire suppression systems, gas phase cooling by water sprays, flame extinguishment, and the suppression of large complex solid fire loads. Several new features were programmed to the code related to the description of water sprays, flame extinguishment, and suppressability of solid fire loads. Significant emphasis was put on validating the model performance against experimental data. When such data was not readily found in the literature, experiments were conducted to create the data. Due to the code development and validation work, the capability of FDS to predict the performance of fire suppression systems has been significantly improved.