A virtual reality based fire training simulator integrated with fire dynamics data

VR (virtual reality)-based fire training simulators provide the general public or inexperienced firefighters or commanders with wide-ranging second-hand experience so that they can make prompt decisions and safe and organized responses in actual fire situations. In order to effectively achieve this training goal, it is crucial to reliably express fire dynamics as realistic graphics. In the field of engineering, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is widely used to precisely predict the behaviors of fluid phenomena. The resultant data, however, have structures and capacities that are not readily applied to real-time virtual reality systems. This study proposes a series of data conversion techniques and a real-time processing framework to develop a fire training simulator on the basis of a precise CFD simulation that is capable of calculating various invisible physical quantities such as toxic gases and heat as well as visible factors such as smoke and flame. By exploiting safety level-based visualization mapping, this study also proposes a new method to intuitively experience dangerous fire environments and perform training and evaluation. Lastly, this study implements a simulator that can undertake simple firefighting activities such as evacuation and rescue in fire situations at road tunnels; the functions and real-time performance of the simulator have been experimentally measured to verify the applicability of the proposed framework. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.