Design Fire Example

This example demonstrates how to generate a simple design fire using a t-squared growth curve and an exponential decay phase. The function simple_design_fire() combines a growth, steady-state, and decay phase based on user-specified input parameters.

As a result, data time series are provided to be used further, for example in a plot.

It is part of the hand calculation tools available in FireSciPy.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from firescypy.handcalculation.design_fires import simple_design_fire

# Define parameters
Q_max = 1000  # Maximum heat release rate [kW]
Q_total = 300000  # Total energy [kJ]
decay_model = "exponential"

# Optional parameters for exponential decay
kwargs = {
    "alpha": "fast",         # Growth rate classification
    "decay_constant": 0.03,  # Exponential decay rate [1/s]
    "t_end": 300,            # Duration of decay phase [s]
    "num_points": 100        # Resolution
}

# Compute the design fire
time, HRR = simple_design_fire(Q_max, Q_total, decay_model, **kwargs)

# Plot the result
plt.plot(time, HRR)
plt.xlabel("Time / s")
plt.ylabel("Heat Release Rate (HRR) / kW")
plt.title("Simple Design Fire Curve")
plt.grid(True)
plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()