(GRS 213) International Collaborative Fire Modeling Project (ICFMP)

Fire simulations as well as their analytical validation procedures have gained more and more significance, particularly in the context of the fire safety analysis for operating nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, fire simulation models have been adapted as analytical tools for a risk oriented fire safety assessment.
Calculated predictions can be used, on the one hand, for the improvements and upgrades of fire protection in nuclear power plants by the licensees and, on the other hand, as a tool for reproducible and clearly understandable estimations in assessing
the available and/or foreseen fire protection measures by the authorities and their experts.
For consideration of such aspects in the context of implementing new nuclear fire protection standards or of updating existing ones, an “International Collaborative Project to Evaluate Fire Models for Nuclear Power Plant Applications” also known as the
“International Collaborative Fire Model Project” (ICFMP) was started in 1999. It has made use of the experience and knowledge of a variety of worldwide expert institutions in this field to assess and improve, if necessary, the state-of-the-art with respect to
modeling fires in nuclear power plants and other nuclear installations. This document contains the results of the ICFMP Benchmark Exercise No. 4, where two fuel pool fire experiments in an enclosure with two different natural vent sizes have
been considered. Analyzing the results of different fire simulation codes and code types provides some indications with respect to the uncertainty of the results.