A zone model for fire development in multiple connected compartments

Developments in fire engineering and in the understanding of fire influence on humans, together with advances in regulatory base, encourage the use of performance-based methodologies and numerical fire simulation tools in ship design. A numerical method for fire modelling in multiple ship compartments is proposed here, which can be used routinely in the assessment of alternative designs due to its speed and robustness. The method uses an improved treatment of walls between compartments and an efficient algorithm for pressure calculations. The performance of the method is demonstrated on two examples, experimental results for which were available in the literature. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.