FireFOAM

This is the public-facing release of the Fire Modeling team at FM Global's customized version of the FireFOAM solver for CFD simulations of fires. It is based on the ESI/OpenFOAM-v1912 implementation. The key external dependencies are ESI/OpenFOAM-v1912 and ESI/ThirdParty-v1912. See also our company website.

Installation instructions

We will install ESI/ThirdParty, ESI/OpenFOAM and FM-public/FireFOAM in a case-sensitive drive on a Linux machine at a location /path/to/FM-public-FF/.

Create the containing directory and enter it.

mkdir -p /path/to/FM-public-FF
cd /path/to/FM-public-FF

Copy the setup script to this location and make it executable. Do not clone the repository yet.

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fireFoam-dev/fireFoam-v1912/main/fireFoam_setup.bash
chmod +x fireFoam_setup.bash

Check the top of the file and adjust options as desired. For this project, the defaults should suffice. If debugging capability is desired (at the expense of computational speed), change the BUILD_TYPE setting to Debug.
Run the installation script. This can take up to three hours to complete. The & puts the job in the background. Foreground and background processes can be toggled using the commands fg and bg.

./fireFoam_setup.bash > install_log.txt &

The downloading of ThirdParty from SourceForge sometimes fails. In this case, simply repeat step 4.
Occasionally there may be an issue midway through the installation process. The script can be re-run without repeating successfully completed sections by specifying the START_STEP parameter based on the steps in the fireFoam_setup.bash script. See comments in the script for details.

After following these steps, the directory should look as follows:

/path/to/FM-public-FF/
  fireFoam-v1912/
  OpenFOAM-v1912/
  ThirdParty-v1912/
  fireFoam_setup.bash
  install_log.txt
  wget-log

Tutorials

Running instructions

Navigate to the directory where you want to run the tutorials. It should not be inside /path/to/FM-public-FF/.

mkdir -p /path/to/cases/
cd /path/to/cases/

Copy a case to this location, e.g.,

cp -r /path/to/FM-public-FF/fireFoam-v1912/tutorials/poolfireMcCaffrey .
cd poolfireMcCaffrey

Prepare the environment.

source /path/to/FM-public-FF/OpenFOAM-v1912/etc/bashrc

Set the number of cores to be used in the simulation in system/decomposeParDict. For cases with film and pyrolysis regions, the same must be done for each region, by setting the number of cores in system/filmRegion/decomposeParDict and system/fuelRegion/decomposeParDict.
Prepare the case.

./mesh.sh

Either run the job locally, or submit the job to a cluster. For the latter, consider the example submission scripts named run.sh.
Use other scripts, e.g., postproc.sh and reconstruct.sh, to perform initial analysis of the data.

Case: poolfireMcCaffrey

A 30cm x 30cm square burner injects gaseous methane into the gaseous domain at a rate equivalent to 58kW of mean heating power when the methane has fully combusted. The methane combusts with the ambient air.

This tutorial is a simulation of the 58kW methane gas pool fire from McCaffrey's experiments, described in:

[1] https://github.com/MaCFP/macfp-db/tree/master/Gaseous_Pool_Fires/McCaffrey_Flames/Computational_Results/2017/FMGlobal

[2] Y. Wang, P. Chatterjee, J.L. de Ris, Large Eddy Simuulation of Fire Plumes, Proc. Combust. Inst. (2011) DOI: 10.1016/j.proci.2010.07.031

Case: burningBoxSuppression

Two cardboard boxes are floating above the ground, one on top of the other. Each box is 20 cubic inches. A burner is centered on the ground and beneath the boxes box, injecting gaseous methane into the gaseous domain at a rate that ramps from zero to the equivalent of 140kW when the methane has fully combusted with the ambient air. A sprinker, modeled as a water injector, is centered above the upper box, with a flow rate of 0.1 kg/s. The injector is turned on after 90 seconds of simulation time, creating a film on the boxes and suppressing the fire. The purpose of the case is to demonstrate the coupling among pyrolysis, combustion, radiation, water spray and water film.

Configuration diagram:

         o          <------ Sprinkler
        /|\
       / | \        <------ Spray
      /  |  \

      -------
     |       |
     |       |      <------ Cardboard box
     |       |
      -------



      -------
     |       |
     |       |      <------ Cardboard box
     |       |
    ^ ------- ^
    ^^^^^^^^^^^
       ^^^^^
        ^^^
        ^^^         <------ Burner flame
        ^^^
        ^^^
    ====^^^====     <------ Ground
    
         ^
         |
         |
       Burner

Issues

Issues with installation, tutorials, code behavior and documentation can be opened, tagged and tracked via the "Issues" tab at the top of the page.