OUR TECHNICAL COMPETENCES
Expertise in fire safety codes, standards and technical requirements.
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations of fire in complex 3D geometries for analysing:
- Ventilation and performance of smoke-exhaust systems.
- Temperature maps and heat fluxes at targets.
- Dispersion and concentration of toxic and flammable species.
- Evacuation procedures and fire-fighters intervention.
- Performance of automatic extinction systems.
- The definition of source terms through efficient combustion modelling.
Finite Element (FEM) simulation for calculating:
- Static and dynamic analysis of structures and mechanical elements.
- Linear and non-linear analysis of structures and mechanical elements.
- Thermal-stress analysis.
- Behaviour of materials (wood, steel, composites to cite a few) under thermal and mechanical loads: deformation and evaluation of collapse mode of structures,
- Cracks and stress analyses in concrete (tunnel linings).
CFD simulations can be performed with FDS, FLACS, ANSYS Fluent and OpenFoam while FEA can be done with DIANA and ABAQUS. Applus+ Laboratories has developed a methodology (from geometry definition through mesh generation to consistency analysis of the results) ensuring compliance with quality standards.
OUR SERVICES
On-site Inspection and Evaluation of Fire Protection Components and Systems:
- Technical Evaluations of active and passive singular fire protection systems for validating their performances in fire situations.
- Technical Inspections as a Third Party for evaluating fulfilment of regulations in force.
- Structural analysis in fire situations.
- Inspection, Test and Evaluation of existing automatic fire sprinklers systems according to maintenance plan or normative requirements (as NFPA 25 for example).
- Technical evaluation of products suitability for unconventional configurations and/or innovative products.
Performance Based Design (PBD) and Third-Party Evaluation:
- Assist main contracting parties in performing PBD analysis, from the development phase until the execution phase, following recommendations in ISO 23932-1. Perform CFD simulations with FDS and FEM simulations with DIANA for assessing Performance Criteria (ISO 23932-1) within the framework of national building codes and regulations.
- Third-Party Evaluation: global review of Performance Based Design project, including simulations performed within the framework of Performance Based Design methodologies.
Advanced Fire Safety Analyses for Singular Configurations:
- Analysis of singular and complex fire safety issues using technical capabilities (CFD, FEA) and know-how in fire safety engineering.
- Safety engineering for tunnel and subterranean infrastructures using both our experience in fire testing (in-situ tests, tests in our 600m long tunnel and ad-hoc tests) and our technical capabilities in fire safety engineering (CFD and FEM simulations).
Smoke test in Applus+ TST Tunnel
Technical Analysis of Product Failures:
- Diagnosis services of passive and active fire protection products failure.
*CFD = Computational Fluid Dynamics, FEM = Finite Element Method, FEA = Finite Element Analysis, PBD = Performance Based Design.