Fire risk management and fire fighting in large room networks - Military and civil proofs – MARINER-DECM

In the MARINER Project, the concept of a probabilistic network model for the “real-time” simulation of fire spread in massively multi-compartmented spaces has been validated in a full-scale vessel mockup. At this stage of development (TRL of 4), the model takes into account fire transmission through openings, walls and simplified ventilation ducts. At the compartment scale, fire behavior is described using a zonal model whose validation has been completed using experimental data collected from a set of standard fires (single-component fuels, fully-ventilated conditions) conducted in the DIAMAN facility (funded in part by the MARINER Project), representative of a naval vessel compartment. The present project aims at improving the network model, developing an interactive user interface, and conducting demonstrations for both civil and military environments (with TRLs of 6 and 7, respectively).
The present project, called MARINER-DECM, is a dual-use project since the network model will be extended to account for common and specific characteristics of the civil and military domains. For both applications, the nature of combustible materials is diverse and many different combustible materials may be involved in a fire. The same is true for structural materials. The first task at hand will be to acquire the thermo-physical and combustion properties of such materials, which is crucial for accurately calculating compartment fire behavior and fire transmission from a compartment to another. The mean durations of fire transmission will be determined either experimentally (test benches, DIAMAN facility) or numerically using the tools developed by the project partners to simulate non-standard fire behavior, firefighting using water systems or inhibitor agents, and fire transmission through a ventilation network or along cable trays. Full-scale experiments, in the DIAMAN facility, will be conducted for model validation in the military context, while for the civil context validation will be performed using data from the literature or partners’ data.
Due to their opacity, toxicity and temperature, fire-induced smoke is the leading cause of death and may compromise the evacuation of people and the maintenance in operating conditions of the structure. This issue will be addressed by developing a specific module for the calculation of visibility based on contrast and luminous intensity in a smoky atmosphere, with or without water spraying. This module will be validated using data from full-scale fires in the DIAMAN facility. Given the induced thermal, optical and toxic stresses, a macroscopic evacuation model will be developed and validated, taking into account human behavior.
The network model will incorporate the above-mentioned advances. A data assimilation method (based on precise positions of the active fires, burnt areas, detection and firefighting data) will be combined with the model to update fire spread and thus optimize evacuation and fire-fighting strategies.
In the civil context, the network model will be applied to a representative environment, namely a high-rise building. A preliminary step will be to include specific features in the model, e.g. smoke extraction, atrium or outside hot gases or flames out of windows. The demonstration in the military context will be to simulate fire spread in a full-scale naval vessel mockup, sufficiently close to the operational system, provided by DGA.
For both applications, a user interface will be created, including a pre-processor in order to collect geometric data (vessel modeler of DGA Tn or IGH modeler) and a graphic post-processor for output data visualization. The final tool developed will provide complete and continuous information about the current situation regarding the fire scene and the risk forecast for the coming hours, allowing the safe evacuation of people and the evaluation of the vulnerable areas to be defended according to different priorities.