Simulating the Response of Composite Plates to Fire

The present paper introduces a numerical study on the fire behavior of composites during exposure to a heating source at high incident power. A novel numerical model is proposed which is able to simulate the behavior of composite materials in fire environment providing the composites mass loss rate and heat release rate during heating source application. Two commercial software have been selected as platforms for the implementation of the proposed numerical model COMSOL and ANSYS. In COMSOL the model has been implemented by introducing proper field equations, while a macro, written in Ansys Parametric Design Language, has been used to allow the ANSYS FEM code to numerically simulate, by an incremental procedure, all the relevant physical phenomena related to fire. As an application, an experiment on thermal degradation over a laminated composite plate has been numerically simulated and the numerical model has been validated by comparing the COMSOL and Ansys numerical results to experimental literature data in terms of temperature profile over the panel thickness, Mass Loss Rate and Heat Release Rate. An excellent agreement has been found between the obtained numerical results and the experimental test data for both the adopted numerical platforms. However the ANSYS implementation, which showed to be the most effective in terms of accuracy of results and perspectives of applications to complex numerical models, led to the definition of a powerful tool able to assesses the fire performance of composite structures.