My team and I are fire engineers who are interested in finding a FEA software. We are analysing how structures (such as buildings) deform/undergo stress in a fire. We were wondering whether Simscale can apply FEA to a structure that experiences different temperatures over time (temperature profile)? For example, how will the same structure deform if a fire is 100° at 7:00pm and if the fire grows to 110° at 7:01pm?
Most software can only apply a constant temperature to the structure (100° at 7:00pm and 100° again at 7:01pm), however most fires increase in temperature over time.
Another question we had is can Simscale model a fire at different locations? For example:
7:00pm: Fire at 100° on left side of building and another fire at 102° on right side of building
7:01pm: Fire now at 103° on left side of building and right side building fire is now at 105°
In summary, does Simscale offer FEA analysis for structures experiencing different temperatures, at different locations over a time period?
Hi Tina and thanks for the long explanation of your problem!
Unfortunately we do not offer such a module that is specifically designed for such applications. What you can do though is a Heat Transfer Analysis or CFD Analysis trying to give certain estimations about temperatures at specific locations (Example: Natural Convection Simulation. However there are methods out there such as FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator - LINK) or combustion as well as turbulence models only for that application.
If you would like to see this feature on our platform feel free to post your request into the Vote For Features section. The number of upvotes determine the necessity and priority of implementing this feature in the near future
Thanks for reaching out to SimScale with your issue though! If you have any other questions related to your project feel free to jump back into this discussion or contact me privately!
I actually think this is possible. If for example, we look at just the buildings structure (i.e. the frame or concrete or whatever) and apply a heat load to the structure in the area of the fire. They are not really interested in fire spread or even the CFD aspect. therefore, apply temperature loads directly to the structure transiently:
here via csv or function in respect to time we could indeed see how the structure performs under these conditions. They appear to be only interested in structure deformation so modelling on the metal structure seems simple enough? maybe if @tinafluk uploaded a geometry we could give it a shot?
Thanks for jumping in Darren. What I thought was the deformations caused by the fire and the development as well as the propagation of it. If the fire itself is not of higher interest we could definitely work with the method you proposed and use heat transfer/thermomechanical (transient) analysis and provide the different locations as proposed by @tinafluk to investigate the whole area.
If you could provide us with a CAD model @tinafluk we could give this a try!
