Citation

Rafinazari A, Hadjisophocleous GV. Fire Technol. 2018; 54(1): 229-253.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10694-017-0682-y

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper presents full-scale test results and CFD modeling of smoke conditions in atrium fires in the case of symmetric make-up air opening arrangements. The atrium used for the experiments was equipped with a smoke management system capable of exhausting 132 m3/s. Thermocouple trees were installed to measure the temperature along the height of the atrium. The N-percentage method was used to determine the smoke interface height from the measured temperature profiles. Make-up air velocities of 1 m/s, 1.5 m/s and 2 m/s were selected to investigate the effect of make-up air velocity on the smoke interface height in the case of 4-side and 2-opposite side openings. The fire size varied from 1 MW to 5 MW to cover the effect of small, medium and large fires. FDS was also used to simulate the atrium fires in order to compare the predictions with the full-scale test results and evaluate the accuracy of the developed correlations.

RESULTS show that the limit of 1 m/s is too restrictive in the case of symmetric opening arrangements. A correlation is proposed based on the full-scale test results that can be used to modify the smoke layer height obtained using plume equations so that the effect of make-up air velocity on the smoke layer height is considered.

Language: en

Keywords

Atrium smoke management; CFD modelling; Full-scale fire test; Make-up air velocity