New to FDS

[MechAustin]

For the past two weeks, I've been learning FDS for research purposes. I have looked at several YouTube videos and other tools, but I still can't figure out how to model prairies on terrain or model a wind profile (vector fields).

Specifically, I am stuck on:

Grasslands: Is there a standard way to apply grass properties to terrain surfaces (using &SURF)?

Wind: Is there a way to import GIS vector fields directly, or do I need to convert them into &WIND ramps manually?

If anyone knows about these or can point me to a good example file, please help!

[mcgratta]

There are two very different approaches to modeling wildfire in FDS. The first involves using particles to represent vegetation over domains that are hundreds of meters on a side. The second involves empirical spread models for domains that are tens of kilometers on a side. Which is your preference?

In any case, you can look at simple examples called CSIRO_Grassland_Fires whose input files are here. These cases are discussed in the FDS Validation Guide.

[mcgratta]

If you want to set up files like this for yourself, you need to install QGIS, install the qgis2fds plug-in, and then load the file QGIS_Files/Level_Set_Demo.qgs that lies in the folder parallel to FDS_Files.

[mcgratta]

I will add to the README with more details.

[mcgratta]

I added a few additional links to that README file. The short answer to your question is that there is a separate program called qgis2fds that is a plug-in to QGIS. So you need to install QGIS, then the plug-in, then import the .qgs file that I used to create the FDS input file you ran. Those two files, Landfire.gov_F13.csv and Level_Set_Demo_Wind.csv are located in the QGIS_Files folder. They are needed to generate the FDS input file, but once the input file is made, you do not need them to run FDS.

[MechAustin]

I just reviewed the windsmv file and noticed it is formatted as a table. Could you explain the process for generating one of these files?

[mcgratta]

I am not sure what you mean by the "windsmv file". In any event, most supplementary text files are .csv or comma-delimited text files. They appear on your computer, probably, as an Excel file because that is a common way to read them. .csv is a common format and easy for any program to parse.