Impact and Fire Modeling Considerations Employing SPH Coupling to a Dilute Spray Fire Code
Transportation accidents and the subsequent fire present a concern. Particularly energetic accidents like an aircraft impact or a high speed highway accident can be quite violent. We would like to develop and maintain a capability at Sandia National Laboratories to model these very challenging events. We have identified Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) as a good method to employ for the impact dynamics of the fluid for severe impacts. SPH is capable of modeling viscous and inertial effects for these impacts for short times. We have also identified our fire code Lagrangian/Eulerian (L/E) particle capability as an adequate method for fuel transport and spray modeling. A fire code can also model the subsequent fire for a fuel impact. Surface deposition of the liquid may also be acceptably predicted with the same code. These two methods (SPH and L/E) typically employ complimentary length and timescales for the calculation, and are potentially suited for coupling given adequate attention to relevant details. Length and timescale interactions are important considerations when joining the two capabilities. Additionally, there are physical model inadequacy considerations that contribute to the accuracy of the methodology. These models and methods are presented and evaluated. Some of these concerns are detailed for a verification type scenario used to show the work in progress of this coupling capability. The importance of validation methods and their appropriate application to the genesis of this class of predictive tool are also discussed.