Studying different scenarios of operating air conditioning system in smoke management using computational fluid dynamics in naval ships

Since the dawn of history maritime transport was an essential part of human communication and development which mandates the rapid development of the ship industry. It was accompanied by disasters caused by several factors among them fire played an important role. Fire can cause structural damage which affects ship safety and smoke which is life threating to passengers and ship crow. Trapped smoke in ship compartments if not ventilated or released can reach higher temperatures leading to flashover situation which enable fire propagation. FLUENT CFD calculations were performed to analyze smoke generation and propagation in closed ship compartments. The time to reach flashover is also calculated. Based on how sealed and tight the compartment is three different scenarios where studied in this analysis: running air-condition while compartment door is open, stopped aircondition while compartment door is closed and finally running aircondition while compartment door is closed. The calculations show that, the last scenario which incorporates modified running air-condition scheme to mitigate smoke was the best scenario.