Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS)
Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) is a large-eddy simulation (LES) code for low-speed flows, with an emphasis on smoke and heat transport from fires.
A NIST computational fluid dynamics model for simulating fire-driven smoke, heat, and gas transport in buildings and industrial facilities.
About the Project
Why use this?
FDS is NIST’s large-eddy simulation code for low-speed, thermally driven flow, with particular emphasis on smoke and heat transport from fires. It is used to model compartment fires, ventilation, smoke movement, sprinkler activation, detector response, and heat exposure in buildings and industrial environments.
Process-safety engineers use FDS for fire and explosion consequence analysis, smoke-control design, emergency-response planning, and quantitative fire-risk assessment. Its open-source availability, validated physics, and companion Smokeview visualization tool make it a strong alternative to proprietary fire and consequence-modeling packages for transparent, reproducible safety studies.
Key Features
- Large-eddy simulation of low-speed, fire-driven flows
- Smoke, heat, and combustion-product transport modeling
- Sprinkler, detector, ventilation, and heat-transfer modeling
- Smokeview visualization for scenario review
- Public-domain NIST software suitable for safety and fire-protection engineering
- Reference / Repo
- https://github.com/firemodels/fds
- Tool / Hosted
- https://pages.nist.gov/fds-smv/
- Replaces / Alternative to
- Phast, FDS-based commercial fire modeling tools
- Free layer
- open-source