FDS-related Development Efforts

[Kevin McGrattan <kevin.mcgrattan@nist.gov>]

All

>From time to time I learn about activities going on at
various companies, 
universities and labs involving FDS. I thought I would pass
on the information
so that you all can be made aware of what's up. 

NIST -- Work continues on the parallelization of FDS using
MPI, improvements to
        to the core algorithms, etc. Smokeview is being
enhanced to better represent
        smoke, and Glenn Forney will be beta testing this
new version soon.

Thunderhead Engineering (thunderheadeng.com) -- This is a
software development 
        company that has received a SBIR (Small Business
Innovative Research) grant
        from the National Science Foundation here in the US
to develop and market a
        GUI (Graphical User Interface) for FDS. NIST is not
the funder of this
        effort, but we are cooperating by providing the
developers with whatever
        information they need to do their work -- mainly
clarifying parts of the
        manuals. Info can be found at the above URL.

Seneca College, Ontario Canada
(http://fireforum.senecac.on.ca) -- Prof David McGill
        teaches a fire modeling course that uses FDS, plus
he maintains a web site
        that serves as an open forum for fire modelers.

Western Fire Center -- a FPE firm that has developed various
tools to prepare input
        files for FDS, especially using 3rd party graphics
software. Contact
        Bryan Klein (bryan@westernfire.com) for details.

Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal -- there is a group doing
scientific visualization
        that have developed various GUI and visualization
tools for FDS. They 
        convert PATRAN formatted data into FDS, plus they
have a visualization 
        tool called Vu (something like Fieldview) to show
FDS output. Contact
        marcelo.reggio@polymtl.ca for details.

Fire Research Station (FRS) UK -- FDS is bundled into a
software suite called
        Josefine, that includes the fire models Jasmine and
Sofie, plus other
        FRS tools. Josefine is sold by FRS. See
http://www.bre.co.uk/frs/software.jsp
        for details.


If I have left anything off the list, let me know. Keep in
mind that at NIST we
focus on FDS and Smokeview, and we have decided to let other
institutions or
companies develop GUIs if they want them for their own use,
or if they want to
try to market them. I don't know what the marketability of
any of this sofware is
because fire is such a small market. We'll just let the
software evolve and hope
for the best. 

Perhaps the website set up by Seneca College is a good means
to get the word out
on new tools.

By the way, I put new FDS4 source code on the FTP site. For
those of you who had
trouble compiling on other platforms besides Windows, I
think I might have solved
some of the problems. Let me know.

Kevin






Kevin McGrattan
National Institute of Standards and Technology
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8663
Gaithersburg MD 20899-8663

Telephone: (301) 975 2712
FAX:       (301) 975 4052