Reason Mag Q1 2014 Seite 25

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of research The team decided to start that research focusing on the rack storage of commodities in cardboard boxes This rep resented the most common bulk storage scenario of FM Global s clients and would create the most applicable data Much of FM Global s large scale re testing looks at this storage con guration which leads to sprinkler recommendations for a variety of commodities The research was organized into three main areas re modeling material amma bility and water suppression Teams tackled each of these areas independently and coop eratively conducting tests and developing models for the key physical phenomena that occur in a re Eventually all the research was brought together into the computer model named FireFOAM Initial work originated in the re mod eling team where Dr Yi Wang research group manager wrote the FireFOAM solver It was capable of describing the dynamics of gas phase re and re spread over solid fuels We had to capture all the physics but simplify it enough so that we could run a model in a reasonable amount of time Wang said We really started from scratch When we started I didn t think we could get where we are today in ve years Meredith and his team tackled water transport modeling the physics of water sup pression and its application in rack storage protection His work incorporated a multitude of physical properties including splashing spray evaporation absorption heat transfer and the way water pools and runs off card board boxes All of these things are governed by physics and we had to identify which ones were the dominant factors that control the re Meredith said Just in water trans port there were 14 model areas and each of those areas had a number of sub models And all the other teams had similar num bers of models and subsets that they were looking at Technical team leader Dr Mar cos Chaos led the material ammability research exploring the properties of card board and other fuels and modeling the chemical breakdown of the material as it burns His team also conducted small and medium scale experiments on ame spread to help validate the model Dr Yibing Xin the technical team leader in water suppression led the sprin kler technology program His team explored the physics of water suppression in a vari ety of intelligent re tests They studied sprinkler properties measuring water ux droplet sizes and spray density Each area of research required bench medium and large scale tests for model development and validation This work could not be completed without the exper tise of the personnel from the FM Global Research Campus in West Glocester R I USA Once all the model pieces were com plete it was up to Yi Wang and his team to bring it all together He was responsible for assembling the FireFOAM code and evalu ating the integral model The model was put to the ultimate test in 2012 FireFOAM was used to model a rack storage sprinkler We had to capture all the physics but simplify it enough so that we could run a model in a reasonable amount of time We really started from scratch When we started I didn t think we could get where we are today in five years Dr Yi Wang RESEARCH GROUP MANAGER ISSUE 1 2014 Reason 25 theSCIENCE