ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces various theoretical and numerical methods for fire analysis and begins with the method to determinate the compartment fire including a detailed introduction of zone model and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. It is followed by the introduction of solving thermal response of structural members such as heat transfer analysis and thermal-mechanical analysis processes. Zone models determine the compartment fire through dividing the fire compartment into certain zones with different temperatures. In one-zone model, atmosphere temperature, density, and internal energy and pressure are assumed to be uniform in one compartment. CFD models are most sophisticated and can be numerically very expensive. The solutions of partial differential equations for conservation of mass, momentum, and energy are approximated as finite differences over a number of control volumes describing the fluid flow and heat transfer phenomena associated with fires. Reliability-based method has been used for design codes to determine partial load factors and material safety factors.
