Aircraft cargo compartment fire detection and smoke transport modeling

The US Federal Aviation Administration, along with other regulatory agencies, requires that cargo compartments on passenger carrying aircraft be equipped with fire detection and suppression systems. Current regulations require that the detection system alarms within 1 min of the start of a fire and flight tests are required to demonstrate compliance with these regulations. Due to the high costs of flight tests, extensive ground certification tests are typically conducted to ensure that the detection system will meet the time to alarm requirements during the flight tests. For the purpose of improving the detection system design and certification process, a transient computational fluid dynamics computer code for the prediction of smoke, heat, and gas species transport in cargo compartments has been developed. This simulation tool couples heat, mass, and momentum transfer in a body-fitted coordinate system in order to handle a variety of cargo bay shapes and sizes. Ideally, such a physics-based simulation tool can be used during the certification process to identify worst case locations for fires, optimum placement of detector sensors within the cargo compartment, and sensor alarm levels and algorithms needed to achieve detection within the required time. Validation of the model was completed, and comparison of the predicted results with the results obtained from full-scale fire tests in a variety of actual aircraft cargo compartments provides insight into the model capabilities.