Two-step method for radiative transfer calculations in a developing pool fire at the initial stage of its suppression by a water spray

Abstract A procedure based on two-step method is suggested to simplify time-consuming spectral radiative transfer calculations in open flames containing scattering particles. At the first step of the problem solution, the P 1 approximation is used to calculate the divergence of radiative flux, and it is sufficient to determine the flame parameters. The second step of solution is necessary to obtain the radiation field outside the flame, and this can be made independently using the ray-tracing procedure and the transport source function determined at the first step. Such a splitting of the complete problem results in much simpler algorithm than those used traditionally. It has been proved in previous papers that the combined two-step method is sufficiently accurate in diverse engineering applications. At the same time, the computational time decreases in about two orders of magnitude as compared with direct methods. An axisymmetric pool fire at the initial stage of fire suppression by a water spray is considered as the case problem. It is shown that evaporating small water droplets characterised by a strong scattering of infrared radiation are mainly located in regions near the upper front of the flame and one can observe the scattered radiation. This effect can be used in probe experiments for partial validation of transient Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations.