Modeling of heating and cooling behaviors of laminated glass facades exposed to fire with three-dimensional flexibilities

To develop a precise and efficient computer model for predicting the heating and cooling behaviors of laminated glass facades exposed to fire, there is an urgent need to reduce the huge computational requirements associated with simulating heat transfer in layered structures that feature a down-flowing water film. We overcome this challenge by proposing an efficient three-dimensional finite difference method (3DFDM) which has high numerical stability when solving heat transfer equations with water film and air convection. To capture the moving particles of the water film, we developed a unique computational algorithm for particle labeling, which has two significant advantages: (1) it eliminates the time-consuming process of searching for neighboring particles in conventional meshfree methods, and (2) it ensures that every main particle interacts only with limited neighboring particles without utilizing any weights, thus significantly reducing the computational effort. We validated our 3DFDM through experiments in heating and cooling scenarios and compared its thermal results with those obtained from commercial packages to demonstrate its high efficiency and accuracy. Furthermore, we examined the feasibility of our model in evaluating the effects of thickness of the interlayer and water film release time on the cooling behavior of laminated glass during a fire. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd.