Consolidated Fire and Smoke Transport Model (CFAST)
The CFAST model is a zone model that predicts, based on a specified fire source, the evolution of temperatures, certain species concentrations and the hot upper-cooler lower layer interface heights in a multi-compartment structure. CFAST was developed by the Building and Fire Research Laboratory of NIST.
Researchers in the University of Waterloo Fire Research Group use CFAST to simulate the development of the thermal environment and interface heights in experimental fire scenarios they have conducted in the field and at the Live Fire Research Facility. CFAST modeling is regularly applied in the design of live fire scenarios and structural fire experiments, for the main test enclosure in the LFRF, and for characterization of numerous fire fighter training towers (i.e. the WRESTRC Fire Training Facility, Oakville Fire Training Facility, and Department of National Defence Naval Fire Training Structures).
Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS)
FDS is a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model of fire-driven fluid flows. It uses a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) formulation of the Navier-Stokes equations appropriate for simulations of low-speed, thermally-driven flow and tailored specifically to smoke and heat transport from fires. Smokeview is a visualization program used in conjunction with FDS to graphically represent the simulation results. FDS and Smokeview were developed by the Building and Fire Research Laboratory of NIST.
Researchers in the UWaterloo Fire Research Group use FDS to simulate the development of the thermal environment, as well as aspects of smoke movement and heat transfer in various full-scale field fire scenarios. It is also applied to predict specific fire cases (Pool fires and Aviation fuel fires) that can be applied to experimental data. This allows identification of potential improvements in the sub-models and implementation of any modifications needed to better simulate the full range of complex real fire scenarios.
The UWaterloo Fire Research Group is always interested in extending their modelling efforts into new areas, including computer-based assessment of alternative structural design options, as well as fire service and fire protection engineering applications.