Fire Modeling

Fire and fluid dynamic modeling is used as a risk assessment tool to characterize and understand potential hazards, as part of HAZOP or other process safety programs, or as an investigative tool to recreate a specific fire or set of competing fire scenarios. When performing a facility or process hazard analysis or when conducting a post-incident investigation of a specific fire or explosion, it is necessary to determine factors including: ignition source interaction with adjacent combustibles, fuel loading and interaction of fuel packages in the fire area, liquid or gas fuel dispersion and concentration profiles in near and far fields, generation, transport and dispersion of toxic products of combustion, toxic chemical impact of burning materials and potential hazardous dispersion, time-varying rate of combustion product emissions and fire growth, and, combustion gas temperature profiles and flow rates. Proper application of computer aided fire modeling calculations, coupled with sound engineering analysis, is used to develop an understanding of all these factors, in addition to adding influential confirmation to opinions concerning credible cause and origin findings. Our services in this area include:

• System and component failure analyses related to fires and explosions
• Facility and process fire/explosion hazard analysis
• Fire investigations and analyses
• Application of advanced fire modeling codes and other analytical tools for reconstruction and design analysis
• Fire protection systems performance and reliability analysis
• Research and development, including design of experiments and complete statistical analysis, product development, establishing product performance standards, and life testing
• Testing and analysis for patent prosecution support
  Large and small scale fire testing of materials and protection systems
• Expert witness testimony and reports
• Litigation support

 

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