‘verification and Validation’ in Modeling Fire by Computational Fluid Dynamics

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an important tool in fire safety engineering. CFD is applied in many projects while the global trend is moving towards the implementation of engineering performance-based fire codes. However, questions are always raised on the model credibility. Verification and validation of the CFD predicted results in fire engineering are not yet carried out with systematical full-scale burning tests. Development of verification and validation of CFD predicted results in fire engineering will be reviewed in this paper. Sources of error commonly encountered in modeling fire will be outlined. Three international standards on the assessment of predictive capability of fire models are reviewed and compared. Based on the study, eight methods for verifying and validating CFD predicted results are suggested on: • Checking the completeness of technical documentation. • Checking the scientific ground by independent experts. • Source code checking by independent experts. • Analytical solution comparison. • Benchmark fire code comparison. • Grid size and time step refinement exercise. • Monitoring the residual error of governing equations. • Validation with experimental results.