Interfacing materials models with fire field models

For flame spread over solid materials, there has traditionally been a large technology gap between fundamental combustion research and the somewhat simplistic approaches used for practical, real-world applications. Recent advances in computational hardware and computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based software have led to the development of fire field models. These models, when used in conjunction with material burning models, have the potential to bridge the gap between research and application by implementing physics-based engineering models in a transient, multi-dimensional tool. This paper discusses the coupling that is necessary between fire field models and burning material models for the simulation of solid material fires. Fire field models are capable of providing detailed information about the local fire environment. This information serves as an input to the solid material combustion submodel, which subsequently calculates the impact of the fire environment on the material. The response of the solid material (in terms of thermal response, decomposition, charring, and off-gassing) is then fed back into the field model as a source of mass, momentum and energy. The critical parameters which must be passed between the field model and the material burning model have been identified. Many computational issues must be addressed when developing such an interface. Some examples include the ability to track multiple fuels and species, local ignition criteria, and the need to use local grid refinement over the burning material of interest