A case study on using the FDS tool for on-site fire investigation

Abstract

When investigating a fire type event, one has to have in mind that maybe the most important aspect is the identification of the source of ignition. Nowadays, commercial and open-source software are available and can be used during such investigations. The fire field model - Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) is one of the most popular numerical model used for fire investigation. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of computer simulations when two hypotheses, Arson effect with multiple fireplaces and electric short circuit are taken into consideration as the cause of the fire. To virtually simulate the findings at the fire site, the FDS tool (Computational Fluid Dynamics) was used. Computational simulations for the two scenarios revealed that the multiple fireplaces scenario, the initial ignition at both the warehouse and the roof of the annex, illustrates the effects of the fire in a similar way to those found at the site, while the scenario with the initial source on the wall of the room with the electrical panel produces a fire located at the level of the construction and is not transmitted to the annex. Consequently, the results obtained validate the multiple outbreak (Arson effect) scenario.