Burn is a model for simulating the burning of materials. It uses tools from the FEniCS project to automate mesh generation, discretization, and solution of the problem. The goal of developing Burn is to enable predictions of burning rate and flame spread across common flammable items. Such a capability will enable materials scientists and engineers to design safer products.

Burn is implemented as a set of Python modules. These modules are found in the scripts/ directory. A simulation is executed using the burn.py script along with an input file. Input files for Burn take the form of Python modules, but require minimal knowledge of Python to create or modify. For examples of input file modules look in demos/, validation/, or verification/. Several meshes generate using Gmsh may be found in meshes/.

Burn requires an installation of FEniCS. The easiest way to use FEniCS is through the FEniCS Docker images. A nice discussion of how to use FEniCS with Docker may be found here.

Once you have Docker installed, it is straightforward to start running Burn. The process is described as follows:

1. Start a Docker terminal.
2. Change directories into your Burn repository.
3. Start a FEniCS session with access to your working directory:
   $ docker run -ti -v $(pwd):/home/fenics/shared quay.io/fenicsproject/stable
4. Change directories to wherever your input file is.
5. Run Burn: `$ ~/shared/burn.py input.py

The output of the simulation will be stored locally in an automatically generated folder. Burn writes temperature and mass fraction fields to vtk files, which may be visualized using ParaView.

To run the plate demo, begin by starting a Docker Quickstart Terminal. Change directories to your Burn repository. Start a FEniCS session (see Step 3 above). Change directories to the plate verification case:

$ cd verification/conduction/plate/

Then launch the simulation using

$ ~/shared/burn.py plate.py