Fires are notoriously difficult to model due to the wide array of complex and interacting physical phenomena including radiative heat transfer, soot formation, turbulent multiphase flow, often unknown or poorly characterized fuel properties, and a wide range of time and length scales. We are using ODT and LES to study flames and fires at increasing scales.
The video at left shows an LES of an ethylene wall fire 1.83 m tall, and 0.61 m wide. The simulation was performed on 128 cores. ODT of the same configuration has also been performed.