Uncertainty Quantification for Cargo Hold Fires

TL;DR

This paper introduces high-order discontinuous Galerkin methods for simulating cargo hold fires and quantifies the uncertainty in flow dynamics due to variable fire source parameters, aiding fire detection system design.

Contribution

It applies advanced numerical methods to cargo fire simulation and incorporates uncertainty quantification to analyze the effects of source variability.

Findings

Quantifies the impact of fire source location and temperature on flow dynamics.

Demonstrates the efficiency of uncertainty quantification techniques in cargo fire modeling.

Provides statistical insights to optimize fire detection system placement.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is twofold -- first, to introduce the application of high-order discontinuous Galerkin methods to buoyancy-driven cargo hold fire simulations, second, to explore statistical variation in the fluid dynamics of a cargo hold fire given parameterized uncertainty in the fire source location and temperature. Cargo hold fires represent a class of problems that require highly-accurate computational methods to simulate faithfully. Hence, we use an in-house discontinuous Galerkin code to treat these flows. Cargo hold fires also exhibit a large amount of uncertainty with respect to the boundary conditions. Thus, the second aim of this paper is to quantify the resulting uncertainty in the flow, using tools from the uncertainty quantification community to ensure that our efforts require a minimal number of simulations. We expect that the results of this study will provide statistical insight into the effects of fire location and temperature on cargo fires, and also assist in the optimization of fire detection system placement.