Publications

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For certification, packages used for the transportation of plutonium by air must survive the hypothetical thermal environment specified in 10CFR71.74(a)(5). This regulation specifies that 'the package must be exposed to luminous flames from a pool fire of JP-4 or JP-5 aviation fuel for a period of at least 60 minutes.' This regulation was developed when jet propellant (JP) 4 and 5 were the standard jet fuels. However, JP-4 and JP-5 currently are of limited availability in the United States of America. JP-4 is very hard to obtain as it is not used much anymore. JP-5 may be easier to get than JP-4, but only through a military supplier. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate that readily-available JP-8 fuel is a possible substitute for the aforementioned certification test. Comparisons between the properties of the three fuels are given. Results from computer simulations that compared large JP-4 to JP-8 pool fires using Sandia's VULCAN fire model are shown and discussed. Additionally, the Container Analysis Fire (CAFE) code was used to compare the thermal response of a large calorimeter exposed to engulfing fires fueled by these three jet propellants. The paper then recommends JP-8 as an alternate fuel that complies with the thermal environment implied in 10CFR71.74.

Polymer foams are used as encapsulants to provide mechanical, electrical, and thermal isolation for engineered systems. In fire environments, the incident heat flux to a system or structure can cause foams to decompose. Commonly used foams, such as polyurethanes, often liquefy and flow during decomposition, and evolved gases can cause pressurization and ultimately failure of sealed containers. In systems safety and hazard analyses, numerical models are used to predict heat transfer to encapsulated objects or through structures. The thermo-mechanical response of systems involving coupled foam decomposition, liquefaction, and flow can be difficult to predict. Predicting pressurization of sealed systems is particularly challenging. To mitigate the issues caused by liquefaction and flow, hybrid polyurethane cyanate ester foams have been developed that have good adhesion and mechanical properties similar to currently used polyurethane and epoxy foams. The hybrid foam decomposes predictably during decomposition. It forms approximately 50 percent by weight char during decomposition in nitrogen. The foam does not liquefy. The charring nature of the hybrid foam has several advantages with respect to modeling heat transfer and pressurization. Those advantages are illustrated by results from recent radiant heat transfer experiments involving encapsulated objects, as well as results from numerical simulations of those experiments.

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Four Well-Characterized Open Pool fires were conducted by Fire Science and Technology Department. The focus of the Well-Characterized Open Pool fire series was to provide environmental information for open pool fires on a physics first principal basis. The experiments measured the burning rate of liquid fuel in an open pool and the resultant heat flux to a weapon-sized object and the surrounding environment with well-characterized boundary and initial conditions. Results presented in this report include a general description of test observation (pre- and post-test), wind measurements, fire plume topology, average fuel recession and heat release rates, and incident heat flux to the pool and to the calorimeters. As expected, results of the experiments show a strong correlation between wind conditions, fuel vaporization (mass loss) rate, and incident heat flux to the fuel and ground surface and calorimeters. Numerical fire simulations using both temporally- and spatially-dependant wind boundary conditions were performed using the Vulcan fire code. Comparisons of data to simulation predictions showed similar trends; however, simulation-predicted incident heat fluxes were lower than measured.

A turbulence model for buoyant flows has been developed in the context of a k-{var_epsilon} turbulence modeling approach. A production term is added to the turbulent kinetic energy equation based on dimensional reasoning using an appropriate time scale for buoyancy-induced turbulence taken from the vorticity conservation equation. The resulting turbulence model is calibrated against far field helium-air spread rate data, and validated with near source, strongly buoyant helium plume data sets. This model is more numerically stable and gives better predictions over a much broader range of mesh densities than the standard k-{var_epsilon} model for these strongly buoyant flows.

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This report summarizes work performed by Sandia National Laboratories for the Federal Aviation Administration. The technical issues involved in fire modeling for aircraft fire research are identified, as well as computational fire tools for addressing those issues, and the research which is needed to advance those tools in order to address long-range needs. Fire field models are briefly reviewed, and the VULCAN model is selected for further evaluation. Calculations are performed with VULCAN to demonstrate its applicability to aircraft fire problems, and also to gain insight into the complex problem of fires involving aircraft. Simulations are conducted to investigate the influence of fire on an aircraft in a cross-wind. The interaction of the fuselage, wind, fire, and ground plane is investigated. Calculations are also performed utilizing a large eddy simulation (LES) capability to describe the large- scale turbulence instead of the more common k-{epsilon} turbulence model. Additional simulations are performed to investigate the static pressure and velocity distributions around a fuselage in a cross-wind, with and without fire. The results of these simulations provide qualitative insight into the complex interaction of a fuselage, fire, wind, and ground plane. Reasonable quantitative agreement is obtained in the few cases for which data or other modeling results exist Finally, VULCAN is used to quantify the impact of simplifying assumptions inherent in a risk assessment compatible fire model developed for open pool fire environments. The assumptions are seen to be of minor importance for the particular problem analyzed. This work demonstrates the utility of using a fire field model for assessing the limitations of simplified fire models. In conclusion, the application of computational fire modeling tools herein provides both qualitative and quantitative insights into the complex problem of aircraft in fires.

For flame spread over solid materials, there has traditionally been a large technology gap between fundamental combustion research and the somewhat simplistic approaches used for practical, real-world applications. Recent advances in computational hardware and computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based software have led to the development of fire field models. These models, when used in conjunction with material burning models, have the potential to bridge the gap between research and application by implementing physics-based engineering models in a transient, multi-dimensional tool. This paper discusses the coupling that is necessary between fire field models and burning material models for the simulation of solid material fires. Fire field models are capable of providing detailed information about the local fire environment. This information serves as an input to the solid material combustion submodel, which subsequently calculates the impact of the fire environment on the material. The response of the solid material (in terms of thermal response, decomposition, charring, and off-gassing) is then fed back into the field model as a source of mass, momentum and energy. The critical parameters which must be passed between the field model and the material burning model have been identified. Many computational issues must be addressed when developing such an interface. Some examples include the ability to track multiple fuels and species, local ignition criteria, and the need to use local grid refinement over the burning material of interest.

This report summarizes Sandia National Laboratories` participation in the fire modeling activities for the German Heiss Dampf Reaktor (HDR) containment building, under the sponsorship of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The purpose of this report is twofold: (1) to summarize Sandia`s participation in the HDR fire modeling efforts and (2) to summarize the results of the international fire modeling community involved in modeling the HDR fire tests. Additional comments, on the state of fire modeling and trends in the international fire modeling community are also included. It is noted that, although the trend internationally in fire modeling is toward the development of the more complex fire field models, each type of fire model has something to contribute to the understanding of fires in nuclear power plants.

A comparison of the KAMELEON Fire model to large-scale open pool fire experimental data is presented. The model was used to calculate large-scale JP-4 pool fires with and without wind, and with and without large objects in the fire. The effect of wind and large objects on the fire environment is clearly seen. For the pool fire calculations without any object in the fire, excellent agreement is seen in the location of the oxygen-starved region near the pool center. Calculated flame temperatures are about 200--300 K higher than measured. This results in higher heat fluxes back to the fuel pool and higher fuel evaporation rates (by a factor of 2). Fuel concentrations at lower elevations and peak soot concentrations are in good agreement with data. For pool fire calculations with objects, similar trends in the fire environment are observed. Excellent agreement is seen in the distribution of the heat flux around a cylindrical calorimeter in a rectangular pool with wind effects. The magnitude of the calculated heat flux to the object is high by a factor of 2 relative to the test data, due to the higher temperatures calculated. For the case of a large flat plate adjacent to a circular pool, excellent qualitative agreement is seen in the predicted and measured flame shapes as a function of wind.