CFD Modelling of Fire and Evacuation for Nuclear Applications

Abstract

The nuclear industry has seen an increased use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technology as a high-fidelity tool for design-basis and beyond-design-basis accident simulations. Among its applications, CFD modeling of fire and smoke propagation in confined zones (e.g., a main control room) emerged promising, since detailed experimental investigation under various accident scenarios would be difficult. Egress analysis taking into consideration of human behaviors is of significant importance to an effective accident mitigation strategy, and high-fidelity analysis tools now encompass these parameters in the simulation and design of emergency evacuation. In the present study, the fire and smoke propagation in a main control room is modelled using the Large Eddy Simulations (LES) code FDS, along with an evacuation module EVAC to simulate the emergency egress under the cabinet fire scenario. The FDS results presented in this paper constitute the first step at CNL in advancing the CFD modeling of fire and evacuation for nuclear applications.