Underground mine fire simulation using multiscale modeling approach

Underground mine fires have always been a major concern. Past events show that fire poses a severe safety hazard to mine workers, and causes tremendous economic loss to the mine and surrounding communities. A good understanding of the interaction between a mine fire and the mine ventilation network is crucial for effective fire emergency planning and hazard control. Unfortunately our understanding of a fire is still limited due to the complex nature of mine fires and a lack of adequate resource for studying them. A new multiscale modeling approach coupling conventional 1D and 3D techniques has shown to be a useful tool to study a mine fire with the latter providing boundary conditions to the former and vice-versa. During simulation, the !D and 3D models dynamically exchange information at the interfaces and operate in parallel. This method has the advantage of low computational complexity when compared to a full 3D model, but provides the same accuracy. Two cases studies were used to demonstrate that the multiscale model was a valid technique for simulating a complex mine fire and the accompanying airflow behavior such as throttling and buoyancy effects during a fire emergency. In both cases, the multiscale model presented a result that was superior to both the full 1D model and the 3D model --Abstract, page iii