Time-to-flood is a key parameter
during a flooding emergency. Especially in complex geometries, it is important
to know the time needed to fill the first flooded room, i.e., the damaged
one. Here, a fast solution for the assessment of the time-to-flood of one or two
parallelepiped rooms is proposed. The progressive flooding of the rooms is first
simulated employing a linearised simulation technique that defines a database of
damage cases covering a wide range of geometries. Explicit equations are then defined
based on the main non-dimensional parameters governing the phenomenon.
The work highlights the relationship between the geometry of a room, the damage
opening, the connection opening, and the time to fill the first damaged room. The
application of the equations is very fast and provides an instantaneous estimation
of the time-to-flood. This makes them particularly suitable for direct application on
board or when creating large datasets of flooding simulations.
