Computational heat transfer became one of the major tools for engineering system design in 1970’s. It has been introduced into Chinese society since 1980’s, especially after Brian Spalding’s first lecture in 1984 in China. As one of Brian’s a few early visiting scholars from China, Professor W. C. Fan has begun his endeavor to expand computational heat transfer to fire research. This paper will first briefly introduce the history of the development of computational modeling with particular applications in fire research — a state funded large project, and then present some representative research work in fire research including recent works on high altitude fire and performance based design.
A multiscale model of wood pyrolysis in fire to study the roles of chemistry and heat transfer at the mesoscale
