A multidisciplinary analysis of the fire propagation in the aspiration system of a building

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the potential causes of a fire event that occurred in a fabric finishing facility with washing and drying units. The research methodology employed includes fieldwork, laboratory tests, and numerical analysis to identify potential factors contributing to the fire event. In the first stage, a field study was carried out and investigations were made at the fire site. In the second stage of the study, samples were taken from the fire site and chemical analyses were conducted in a laboratory. In the third stage, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses were performed based on different hypotheses to simulate the fire event. These numerical analyses were conducted using the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) program, an open-source field model developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of USA. This program has been widely used by researchers in many institutes around the world to simulate different scenarios related to fire phenomena. The data collected in these stages were analyzed to identify the root causes of the fire incident. The multidisciplinary approach presented in this study is expected to make a significant contribution to the literature for determining the causes of similar fire events and strategies for fire prevention.

Keywords

• Post-fire assessment
• Field and building survey
• Fire accelerant chemicals
• Numerical analysis