Smokeview: A Visualization Tool for Understanding Fire Dynamics.
Smokeview: A Visualization Tool for Understanding Fire
Dynamics.
(4890 K)
Forney, G. P.
Fire Protection Engineering, No. 37, 32-34,36,39,40-41,
Winter 2008.
Keywords:
fire models; fire dynamics; fire safety; simulation;
visualization; temperature; vapor phases; temperature
contours; ignition; smoke
Abstract:
The purpose of fire modeling is to gain a better insight
into fire dynamics and how it impacts fire safety -- not
to generate large amounts of data. Gaining this insight
requires visualization tools that display what the
numbers generated by the model represent. This article
highlights some of the features that the visualization
tool, Smokeview, uses to display fire effects.
Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing into
the1990s, NIST researchers Howard Baum and Ron Rehm
developed the basic flow solver that evolved into the
Fire Dynamics Simulator, which was publicly released in
2000. Their solution technique, known as "large eddy
simulation," or LES, captures very complicated fire
plume dynamics. Early attempts to visualize the
calculation results consisted of nothing more than
little particles swirling about in a box. This was
useful to the model developers but hardly to anyone
else. It just did not look like a fire. Smokeview was
written to address this problem. The first version was
released along with FDS in early 2000. Along with
particle-tracking as performed before, it visualized
fire flow data by coloring and animating fire/smoke
flow, making it much easier to interpret FDS simulation
results. Immediately after September 11, 2001, work
began on both FDS and Smokeview to enable them to model
and visualize much larger problems. As a result, fire
scenarios with several million grid cells can now be
modeled and visualized using a cluster of computers.
The next big step in Smokeview's development was the
implementation of an algorithm for visualizing smoke
realistically. The line between FDS, which performs
smoke flow computations, and Smokeview, which performs
smoke flow visualization, became blurred as Smokeview
now performs physics-based computations (Beer's law) in
order to visualize the smoke. The present algorithm for
visualizing smoke only considers the effects of
absorption - how much an object is obscured by smoke.
Future work involves modeling the effects of scattering
- how the interaction between light nd smoke effects the
visualization.
Building and Fire Research Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899