CFD fire simulation on ships with mechanically ventilated enginerooms

The engineroom in a ship is always at a high risk of catching fire as it is positioned at the lower part of a vessel and it is the key element in providing power for operating ship facilities and systems. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) model based on large eddy simulation (LDS) was used to study ship engineroom fires with forced ventilation. Air flow characteristics under four different ventilation conditions with the same fire were investigated and the transient distributions of air flow parameters during the development of the fire were predicted. Free boundary was adopted for the interface between the computation region and the external environment, which allows free fluid flow in and out of the computation region. The results indicate that ventilation conditions inside an engineroom would give a significant effect on the development of a fire, and smoke can be extracted effectively while operating the fans.