CFD Simulation of ventilation and smoke movement in a large military firing range

•CFD used to simulate mixing and transport of pollutants in a large military firing range.•CFD methodology was validated against full scale measurements in existing range configuration.•The original range configuration resulted in multiple unbalanced exhausts with back flow and dead zones.•Three modified exhaust and air wall configurations were examined.•Combination of improved air wall at entrance and use of a single exhaust at exit produced an acceptable design.

This article considers numerical simulations of the ventilation environment within a large 300 m indoor military firing range. The range tunnel is 5.5 m wide ×4.3 m tall ×300 m long. The tunnel is preceded by a large armament room that permits tracked and wheeled vehicles to fire weapons downrange. Combusted gases and particles within the range have been observed to stagnate and obscure the range even after firing short automatic bursts. Computations were performed for existing configurations of supply and exhaust vents, barriers and doors to compare with actual flow measurements made within the range. The numerical model was found to represent the existing flows quite well, so the model was then used to investigate alternate flow configurations.