SMARTFIRE FEATURES

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Key Features of SMARTFIRE v4.1

Advantages of SMARTFIRE v4.1

New Features in SMARTFIRE v4.1

Existing Features from SMARTFIRE v4.0

KEY FEATURES OF THE SMARTFIRE V4.1 ENVIRONMENT  Back

The following table lists some of the key features of the SMARTFIRE V4.1 Environment.

SMARTFIRE V4.1 ADVANTAGES  Back

SMARTFIRE V4.1 has been developed in C++ using Object Oriented modular software design.  This has lead to a highly flexible system capable of extensive enhancement. SMARTFIRE V4.1 offers the fire engineer the following advantages:

• SMARTFIRE discards the outdated concept of batch mode processing, allowing users to access fully interactive CFD, ensuring that the entire modelling process is more efficient and results are more comprehensible.

• An integrated modular simulation environment that provides the design engineer with the tool set required to Specify the Geometry, Specify the Scenario, Mesh the Geometry, Perform the CFD simulations and Interrogate the results.

• A Case Specification tool that uses terms that are familiar to the Fire Safety industry.

• An Interactive Meshing system that enables users to easily edit "geometry" rather than "mesh specific" sub-regions (as found in many traditional CFD case specification tools).

• A fully featured CFD engine that can solve for steady-state/transient turbulent, buoyant flows with forced or natural ventilation including heat transfer with combustion, thermal radiation (using multi-ray, six-flux, or radiosity sub-models), toxicity, HCL (with optional wall surface absorption) and/or Sprinklers on un-structured 3D meshes.

• A built-in data "slice" visualisation capability that can also be used both for post processing visualisation and for continuous solution monitoring.

• Extensive data gathering facilities using line plot graphs, graphs of residuals and monitor values and image captures.

• Comprehensive save and restart facilities allow speculative control and stability research whilst the case database provides data compression and neat file management.

In addition, SMARTFIRE V4.1:

• Is available for PC platforms using 32-Bit Microsoft Windows [NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Vista (tested)]. Support for 64 bit versions of Windows, is currently being developed.

• Details concerning Linux/Unix workstation versions are available on request, Please enquire for further details.

• Minimum PC specification is a P4 1.5GHz with 512MB RAM and 800x600 SVGA.

• Recommended minimum PC specification is a Pentium P4 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon 4400+ with 1024MB RAM and 1024x768 XGA.

• Easy upgrade path with a promise of continued support for all SMARTFIRE releases.

FEATURES IN SMARTFIRE V4.1  Back

SMARTFIRE V4.1 has a host of new and improved features.  The major changes include:

• Scenario Designer tool provides a semi-automated graphical environment for the import of CAD (DXF or floor plan mono-bitmap) drawings for the creation of SMARTFIRE modelling scenarios from building floor plans. This tool does not have to be used if there are no building plans available although the intuitive CAD-like interface can greatly enhance the speed of development of scenario geometries for large scale or complex buildings. The output from this tool will be a 3D geometry model that can be loaded into the SMARTFIRE Case Specification Environment. The tool understands layers used in DXF design drawings and can "scan" for rooms within each floor plan. There are intuitive mechanisms for selecting portions of a complex building plan and selectively incorporating rooms, doors, windows, fires and vents into the scenario to be modelled.

• The parallel version of SMARTFIRE (using MPI), that uses networked PC workstation clusters with domain decomposition to speed up the solution process, has been improved with more of the serial mode interactivity. The parallel CFD engine runs with a slightly more limited Graphical User Interface than the serial version.

• Interactive Visualizer allows intermediate and final results display during the CFD computations. This tool allows a 2D visualisation plane to be viewed within the context of the geometry and the whole scene can be rotated, zoomed or shifted under mouse control. Also now supports visibility distance computation through smoke filled environments.

• SMARTFIRE “DataView” provides results post-processing with geometry display and numerous visualisation options including scalar iso-surfaces/cut-planes, velocity vector displays, streamlines, smoke visualisation, surface data and animated results for multiple time step saves.

• A zone (sub-region) based data link allows SMARTFIRE to export simulation results to the EXODUS evacuation-modelling tool. This now supports toxicity and HCl sub-models and has semi-automated set-up of zones when using the SMARTFIRE Scenario Designer.

• Many of the objects available in the Case Specification Environment have temporal or solution controlled activation/de-activation. This means that, for example, a thin plate object (representing a closed door or window) can be removed from a simulation at a particular time OR if a particular solution condition is detected. This is a very powerful feature that enables such research as secondary ignition of fire sources, opening and closing of vents, baffles, doors and windows, and the activation or deactivation of fans or inlets. New objects have been added (TRIGGER CELL and TRIGGER VOLUME) to provide the solution controlled activation/de-activation. The object triggering can also be delayed.

• Monitor points have enhanced handling so that multiple monitor points can be defined (the last monitor point defined will - as usual - be used for the CFD data monitoring point). All of the monitor points can have selective data output to a variable specific monitoring file. The files will each have monitor-point columns of values that are the variable values for the particular monitor point at successive time steps. The files will be continually appended with all the monitor point data at the end of each time step.

• Gaseous combustion model has partial oxygen sensitivity added. Formerly the Gaseous combustion model did not use the oxygen concentration to limit the rate of combustion. The model is not yet capable of handling fire extinction but this feature and other enhancements are currently being researched.

• The multiple ray radiation model has been optimised so that it performs faster when there are only very minor changes in temperature. The multi ray radiation model (particularly when using many rays) is very computationally expensive and this optimisation makes the use of the model much more practical.

• The automated meshing system has been enhanced with more powerful quality assessment and adjustment routines. The user can choose to check the quality and the system will selectively choose to add cells only where they are actually needed (and be beneficial) rather than the former approach of a brute force increase of the directional cell budget to try and fix the problematic cells/blocks.

• Multiple planar-visualisation windows are supported by the SMARTFIRE CFD Engine, including image saves.

• A number of optimisation strategies have been incorporated within the SMARTFIRE CFD Engine. (i) The data storage mechanisms have been reworked to give much more optimal performance due to the faster cache arrangement of modern PC workstations.  (ii) The CFD Engine supports the removal of certain classes of solid so that certain solid cells are physically removed from the problem and no processing is performed. This is particularly useful for complex scenarios where there are void spaces and blockages that do not participate in any of the solution development. The removal is near 100% effective at saving the compute time for all of the cells that are removed. (iii) Re-indexing of the problem (Research Version Only) using cell activation groups allows processing to be targeted on the cells where the solution is changing the most. This is an experimental technique that is currently being researched and is most likely to be of benefit to large-scale simulation scenarios where parts of the domain experience little or no significant flows or heating. It should be noted that both solid removal and re-indexing have a side effect of losing the regular nature of structured cartesian meshes. The SMARTFIRE CFD Engine can process the unstructured case BUT the visualisation is affected since the data is no longer structured. This means that the visualisation of data cut planes will use the unstructured triangulation routines rather than the regular structured mesh visualisation routines.

• Data output formats support various third part post processing packages. MayaVi (freeware) supported for "snapshot" saves AND incremental saves. TecPlot (commercial) supported for "snapshot" saves. Ensight-6 and -Gold (commercial) supported for "snapshot" saves.

• Porosity objects (for faces and volumes) enable more realistic handling of partial blockages. Some objects, such as meshes/grills and/or objects with sub-structures much smaller than the modelled mesh resolution, might not be adequately modelled using existing thin plate or obstacle objects. Porosity objects allow partially blocked faces and volumes to be specified. In some cases this can enhance the modelling accuracy BUT users are warned that the porosity objects do not have specific turbulence generation handling since any particular porosity patch can represent a multitude of very different geometries (each of which will have a unique effect on the turbulent behaviour). 

EXISTING FEATURES INHERITED FROM SMARTFIRE V4.0  Back

SMARTFIRE v4.1 also maintains the current feature set inherited from SMARTFIRE v4.0, as follows:

• Horizontal vents are available via the user interface with suitably sized extended regions that are automatically created in the vertical direction.

• The automated meshing tool was significantly improved and generates improved quality meshes with smaller mesh budgets than in earlier versions of SMARTFIRE.  The automatic meshing tool has object awareness for improved meshing of complex geometries. This enables the use of meshing rules that specify the minimum number of cells that MUST be used within an object. E.g. a vent must have at least 3 cells in both the “height” and “width” directions in order to provide for both inflow and outflow simultaneously.

• A manual mesh specification tool was included that allows the user to modify the mesh through the addition of cells and the specification of cell distributions. This tool allows experts to fine tune meshes generated by the automated mesh generator.

• Gaseous combustion models and associated control parameters have been incorporated within SMARTFIRE and can be fully activated via the user interface.

• A smoke model was made available for use with the gaseous combustion model and the standard heat release rate model. In the standard heat release rate model the smoke is specified as a mass release rate. When the gaseous combustion model is used, smoke is concentration is determined by assessing the mass of smoke produced by burning 1 unit of fuel.

• Additional ‘objects’ have been specified in the object library thus allowing the user to create simulation cases with greater complexity.

• 2D objects such as Thin Plates and Inlets can be specified anywhere in the flow domain (previously, 2D objects were limited to the surfaces of the geometry region).

• Smart data entry menus and case specification checking now provide easier and more reliable fire modelling.

• A multi-ray radiation model has been included. This model is analogous to the discrete transfer radiation model but is fully compatible with unstructured meshes. It has the benefit of using the same computational mesh as the other models.

• The ability to specify forced ventilation systems such as fans.

• The planar visualisation system in the CFD Engine has been enhanced to allow multiple visualisation planes to be viewed simultaneously.

• New objects have been added to allow data plots to be specified from the SMARTFIRE Case Specification Environment.

• The visualisation system has been enhanced to allow captures to be performed when screen-savers are in use, when other applications are hiding the visuals or when the computer system is locked. Saves under these conditions were formerly not possible.

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