English Profile
The German FDS Usergroup is an independent forum for German speaking users of the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) which offers a platform for intense scientific dialogue.
FDS is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of fire-driven fluid flow. The FDS solver numerically solves a form from the Navier-Stokes equations appropriate for low-speed, thermally-driven flow with an emphasis on smoke and heat transport from fires. The results of the FDS-simulations can be visualized with Smokeview, which is a part of the complete FDS-program package. The simulated data can be displayed in both two and three dimensions-as fixed-images as well as animations. FDS has mainly been developed at the American NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Building and Fire Research Laboratory in cooperation with the VIT Technical Research Centre in Finland and Hughes Associates in Maryland, USA.
The FDS Usergroup was established by hhpberlin and intends to build a widespread contact and cooperation network for the exchange of information, experiences as well as constructive criticism in regard to the FDS program. The online-forum, which is accessible for registered members, also offers possibilities to discuss concrete user problems and to find common solutions.
The FDS Usergroup intends to act as mouthpiece for German FDS-users: In collaborative workshops, members can summarize their experiences, questions, problems, and proposals concerning the practical use of FDS. These posts are bound together according to theme and sent to the main developers. Therefore, FDS-users may influence the further development of FDS and contribute to a user-friendly program. Because of the strong informal contact with the responsible persons at NIST (which was founded one year ago), all feedback can be transferred in a direct, unbureaucratic and straightforward way.
The focal points which the FDS Usergroup intends to influence are:
- the technical performance of FDS,
- the underlying mathematical models,
- the fire models.
„As a mathematician with an emphasis on numerics, I'm mainly interested in the optimisation of the mathematical kernel. For instance, the parallelisation of the program should be improved by the implementation of an optimised Poisson-solver. In the long run, I would like to enhance computational accuracy by introducing adaptive grid refinement techniques. Furthermore, the use of optimised time stepping schemes should allow us to increase the time step sizes." (Dr. rer. nat. Susanne Kilian, initiator and leader of the FDS Usergroup)
hhpberlin
hhpberlin is one of the leading engineering firms for fire safety and fire prevention in Germany.
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