Strategically delivering water to burning commodities is one of the most effective and robust means of suppressing accidental fires. Because of its unparalleled performance and versatility, water-based fire suppression is used extensively. Although the basic cooling (gas and surface) and O2 displacement mechanisms associated with water-based fire suppression are easy to identify, developing detailed models to support fire suppression analysis remains a challenge because of the turbulence, stochastic process, separation of scales, and complex chemistry important to the physical processes governing suppression performance. The enormous complexity of the fire suppression problem is daunting. As such, progress to establish analytical capabilities for evaluating suppression performance has been slow. The absence of this analytical capability has locked the fire safety industry into a costly empirical spiral inhibiting innovation. Dispersed spray interactions (with hot gases, flames, and thermal radiation) and delivered spray interactions (with burning and heated target surfaces) are important in determining fire suppression performance. These dispersed and delivered spray interactions represent rich kinematic, thermal, and chemical processes worthy of exploration. Canonical laboratory-scale and full-scale configurations will be used to isolate and evaluate these phenomena through parallel experimental and numerical activities. Advanced spray characterization and flow diagnostics will be employed to gain insight into local suppression phenomena (useful for model formulation) while simultaneously measuring relevant integral quantities (useful for model validation). Spray transport, extinction, and radiation modeling techniques will be explored and developed for application to large-scale turbulent multi-phase reacting flows (i.e. fire) based on the corresponding canonical experiments. This research offers a comprehensive foundation for validating suppression performance including detailed canonical experiments, well-instrumented full-scale tests relevant to industry, and harmonized analysis.
Water-based fire suppression systems (e.g. sprinklers, water mists, hose streams) represent truly ubiquitous forms of engineering used for life safety and infrastructure protection. The underlying suppression technology is anchored largely in phenomenological observations, empiricism, and qualification tests. The University of Maryland Fire Protection Engineering Department has partnered with industry leaders in an ambitious effort to perform the focused experiments and model development required to equip computational based modeling tools used in fire safety analysis with validated models enabling a major step forward in CFD based evaluation of fire suppression performance. This capability will equip engineers with tools required for performance based fire suppression analysis and design perhaps leading to new technologies and engineering practices for life safety and infrastructure protection. The effort would produce 5 Ph.D. students with expertise in fire suppression and close connections with industry while providing numerous undergraduate research opportunities. This effort would also support an annual fire suppression modeling workshop hosted by UM providing a forum for research advances, industry challenges, and new engineering approaches.
