Throughout its development, FDS has been aimed at solving practical fire problems in fire protection engineering,
while at the same time providing a tool to study fundamental fire dynamics and combustion. FDS
can be used to model the following phenomena:
• Low speed transport of heat and combustion products from fire
• Radiative and convective heat transfer between the gas and solid surfaces
• Pyrolysis
• Flame spread and fire growth
• Sprinkler, heat detector, and smoke detector activation
• Sprinkler sprays and suppression by water
Although FDS was designed specifically for fire simulations, it can be used for other low-speed fluid flow
simulations that do not necessarily include fire or thermal effects. To date, about half of the applications
of the model have been for design of smoke control systems and sprinkler/detector activation studies. The
other half consist of residential and industrial fire reconstructions.