FDS Validation Process

This is a summary of how to run and process the FDS validation cases. These cases are simulations of a variety of experiments. These cases are run and processed with each minor release of FDS.

Note that if all you want to do is compile the FDS Validation Guide, make sure you have all the software except the Fortran compiler, check out the FDS Repository, and skip to the last step, "Compiling the FDS Validation Guide."

All of the input files are located in the Validation folder of the FDS Repository. The routines used to automate this process are mainly shell scripts that are appropriate for a unix or linux operating system. Running and processing the Validation Suite on a Windows PC would require the various scripts to be converted to ".bat" files.

Note that this wiki describes how to run the cases that have already been set up. To set up your own case(s), follow the guidance given in the wiki Validation Case Setup Example.

Required Software

• Git client and an account on GitHub
• Fortran 2008 compliant compiler (You need this only if you are going to run cases)
• Intel MPI or Open MPI libraries
• Slurm job scheduling. You only need the job scheduler if you plan to run the validation cases.
• Python
• LaTeX, preferably pdfLaTeX.

Initial Tasks

The process has a number of prerequisite steps:

• Check out or update the fds, exp, and out repositories under the firemodels organization at GitHub. The instructions can be found at Git Notes Getting Started.
• If you plan to run the validation cases, compile FDS by running the script make_fds.sh in the appropriate folder of the Build directory. You may have to modify the run scripts if your executable is different than that which is set. The default is currently for linux.

Organization

Each sub-directory under fds/Validation represents an experimental test series. The experimental data is kept under version control in a neighboring repository with the same sub-directory structure called firemodels/exp. In the fds repo under fds/Validation/CASENAME/ you will see a folder called FDS_Input_Files. You will also see a couple of bash scripts that run the cases and move the resulting output files to the repository called firemodels/out.

Running the Cases

There are two scripts in the Validation folder that run all the Validation cases. One is called Run_All_Serial.sh and the other Run_All_Parallel.sh. The first one should be launched first, because it contains all the cases that require just one MPI process. The second one contains the larger parallel cases. You can also manually run cases by descending into each folder and running Run_All.sh.

Processing the Output

• cd to fds/Validation
• Type: ./Process_All_Output.csh or process individual cases by running ./Process_Output.sh from within the sub-folders. Make sure that the file is executable. Otherwise, just type: chmod +x *sh. The Process_Output.sh script will copy the output files from Current_Results into the corresponding sub-directory in the neighboring firemodels/out repository (where output files are kept under version control).

Compiling the FDS Validation Guide

You do not have to rerun the Validation Suite if you just want to compile the FDS Validation Guide. But you do have to run the Python script FDS_validation_script.py to make all the figures. Here is how you do it:

• cd to fds/Utilities/Python
• Type: python FDS_validation_script.py at the command prompt. The script takes about 30 minutes to run.
• cd to fds/Manuals/FDS_Validation_Guide and at the command prompt type: make_guide.sh. This script runs pdflatex and bibtex such that the FDS Validation Guide is fully compiled with all cross-references properly established.
• Inspect the various plots and graphs in the Guide for accuracy.