Computational modeling of fire spread and structural response in multi-story buildings

One of the worst disasters for urban infrastructure is fires in high-rise buildings, because hundreds of thousands of residential fires take place annually in the United States, causing major property damage and tragic lives lost. Managing fire safety in tall buildings is difficult due to the many connections between how the fire acts, how the building responds to the heat and the shape of the structure. Engineers and researchers can now use computational modeling to recreate many different fire-spread scenarios in multi-story buildings, since it’s often impossible or too cost-effective to perform them as real experiments. The progress of these approaches means that now they are able to consider the detailed physics of how materials react to high heat, fuel combustion and the structure’s movements, all using advanced models. Both computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis have improved how we model fire-structure events, leading to improved prediction of weaknesses in structures and the time needed for people to evacuate. With the help of new computing resources, it is now possible to use advanced models to investigate many different fire scenarios, offering useful guidance for builders, fire planning teams and first responders. Current computer models take into account issues such as ventilation influences, varied fuel loads and materials of structures which makes them more realistic in predicting both how fire occurs and what the building will do due to fire. Besides, these types of models are now more important in performance-based design because they can take into account the unique aspects of today’s buildings that prescriptive codes might not. This review article explores the latest computational ways to simulate fire and building behavior in multi-story buildings in the United States building industry, describing the tools and methods, how they are verified and how their use affects fire safety and emergency planning.