Jia, Fuchen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1850-7961, Wang, Zhaozhi ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8986-0554, Galea, Edwin R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0001-6665 and Ewer, John ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0609-272X (2026) A CFD fire simulation model for external living walls. Fire Safety Journal, 161:104664. ISSN 0379-7112 (Print), 1873-7226 (Online) (doi:10.1016/j.firesaf.2026.104664)

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Abstract

A CFD fire model for Living Walls (LW) is presented in this paper. The combustion of the LW support structure (plastic material) is modelled as an external cladding system within SMARTFIRE. The plants and growing medium of the LW system are represented as two groups of combustible porous materials, which consist of solid particles. The combined model provides a unique capability to simulate fires in external LW systems and is validated using data from a variety of LW fire experiments. The model produced good agreement for the measured HRR in an SBI fire test; comparable burning states and temperature profiles of two large-scale tests; and similar time to fail for a LW structure, without plants or growth media, in a BS 8414 test. It is found that although the simulated HRRs from the burning plants are sensitive to the moisture content, the plant mass, the surface area to volume ratio etc., the total HRR of the investigated LW system is dominated by the burning of the plastic structure. It is suggested that the fire risk posed by the investigated LW system is at least as high as that for a Grenfell type cladding system.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	University of Greenwich Innovation fund 2023 (1-R1110-321D-P13436). The authors gratefully acknowledge Wojciech Węgrzynski from Instytut Techniki Budowlanej for discussing and sharing information concerning the SBI and large-scale LW tests presented in this paper, and the Fire Protection Association (FPA) and AXA Insurance for providing the BS 8414 test data for a LW structure. This is an important paper for the REF. In this paper we present 3 validation cases of our CFD fire model, including for the first time actual vegetation rather than just the support infrastructure for the living wall.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	living wall, green wall, CFD, modelling, SBI fire test, BS8414 fire test, large scale fire test
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD61 Risk Management Q Science > Q Science (General) Q Science > QA Mathematics Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Engineering & Science Faculty of Engineering & Science > School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences (CMS)
Last Modified:	09 Mar 2026 09:03
URI:	https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/52615

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