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Why tFIRE Hydraulics? Need to perform design in confidence

Fire engineers can't run away from fire hydraulic calculations. It is tedious by manually calculating.  Most fire systems installed today are hydraulically engineered for reliability and cost-effectiveness. Hydraulic calculations are paramount in designing water-based fire fighting systems to ensure adequate flow and pressure in the most remote areas. To be efficient and sustainable in solving the fire hydraulic issues, see how easy it is to do it with tFIRE hydraulic calculations in a digital environment.

tFIRE Hydraulic Calculations and Analysis: Design with ease, Just-In-Time solutions to meet your need

tFIRE hydraulic performs tree system fire hydraulic calculations based on pressure dependent demand model. It uses the Hazen-Williams formula for the hydraulic analysis of end heads or nozzles towards the water source/pump. NFPA modifiers for fitting equivalent length and Hazen-William C-factor are adopted in the hydraulic calculations. The process of calculating is iterative. The actual discharge flowrate of heads or nozzles is governed by the  specified head K-factor and the minimum head flow criteria. At any hydraulic junction point, flow balancing is necessary since there can only be one pressure at any point.  NFPA 13 states that the pressure at the hydraulic junction should balance to within 0.03 bar. 

Notes:  Looped or gridded pipe network is not available in tFIRE.

Built-in pipe types (with its pipe internal diameter and Hazen-Williams C-factor) are:

[1] S40 = API Sch 40 (C=120), ANSI B36.10

[2] S41 = API Sch 40 (C=100 for dry pipe system), ANSI B36.10

[3] SMW = Steel Medium Weight (C=120), EN 10255

[4] SM1 = Steel Medium Weight (C=100 for dry pipe system), EN 10255

[5] SS4 = Stainless Steel Sch 40 (C=150), ANSI B36.19

[6] DIC = Ductile Iron Cement-lined (C=140), EN 545

[7] CUL = Copper Type L (C=140), ASTM B88

[8] CUX = Copper Table X (C=140), EN 1057

Built-in valves and fittings (with its equivalent length) are:

[1] SE = 90o Screwed Elbow

[2] WE = 90o Welded Elbow

[3] TC = Tee or Cross

[4] BV = Butterfly Valve

[5] GL = GLobe Valve

[6] GV = Gate Valve

[7] SC = Swing Check Valve

Built-in isometric diagram generator

Starting from version 3 onwards, tFIRE is capable of producing isometric diagram with adjustable drawing size to suit viewing and printing.  Depending on the complexity of the piping network, it is necessary to adjust the drawing size (bigger or smaller) of the isometric diagram.  drawPipe is employed as the built-in isometric diagram generator.

Important to Note:

The software is designed with only the following Engineering units.

Flow: L/min (LPM).    Velocity: m/s

Pressure: bar.    Head K-factor = LPM/sqrt(bar)

Pipe Length: m.   Diameter: mm 

Discharge density: mm/min.    Area: sq.m

Demo Example: illustrates ease of input and formatted output

input data:

calculation results output:

download full pdf copy of the calculation results report with isometric.

Verification: Result Comparisons with other 3rd party fire hydraulic software

Calculations using other third-party fire hydraulic programs are studied. The comparison of the results is shown below. It is noted that this study is not an apple-to-apple comparison due to some differences in equivalent length for the valves and fittings.

calculation results output: 

download full pdf copy of the calculation results report with isometric.

For Android OS, see aSprinkler - Fire Sprinkler Design & Check Tools.

If you need to plot pump curve and system curve to analyse the water demand of the pump source, you can use PumpCurve ScaledPlot or  CurveFit Tracer to do so.