New Fire-Simulating Tool Could Improve In-Flight Fire Safety

New Fire-Simulating Tool Could Improve In-Flight Fire Safety
NIST researchers used the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) to model the temperatures of smoke throughout the overhead compartment of an airliner. A 3D rendering of FDS's output shows a slice of smoke rising from a gas burner placed at the front of the compartment, with colors indicating temperature from hot (red) to cold (blue).

Credit: NIST


Some of the most dangerous fires are the ones you don’t see coming. That goes not only for fires in buildings but for those kilometers off the ground, aboard commercial airliners. Many aircraft have systems to detect fires early on, but fires that spark in their attics, or overhead compartments — spaces with curved ceilings, filled with air ducts, electrical wiring and structural elements — could potentially sneak past them. 


“Attic fires are less likely to occur than elsewhere in a plane, but they are hard to detect,” said Haiqing Guo, a contract fire research scientist at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). “By the time you see it, it’s too late.” 


Fire detector placement in overhead compartments is particularly challenging for fire protection engineers as it is unclear how to predict where smoke will travel amid the irregularly shaped clutter. A fire-simulating computer model developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) could now offer some much-needed guidance thanks to recent updates. In a new study, a team of NIST and FAA researchers tested the tool against a real-world scenario, where fires burned inside a grounded airliner, and found that the software closely replicated measured temperatures and correctly identified hot spots in the attic. 


NIST’s Fire Dynamics Simulat ..

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