Investigation of the Smoke Ventilation and Evacuation Strategies to Decrease Smoke Poisoning Risk by Coupling Fire and Evacuation Simulations

Abstract

In this study spread of smoke from a possible fire in a University building and the evacuation time of occupants were simulated. Fire dynamic simulations (FDS) have been done for natural and forced smoke evacuation with different scenarios; at the same time, evacuation simulations have also been done for various scenarios for different exits at the building. While occupants move through changing CO, CO2, and O2 concentrations, Fractional Effective Dose (FED) was gathered to obtain results from both simulations. FED results were evaluated for poisoning risk of occupants. According to comparative results, the combination of scenarios that forced smoke evacuation by fan and evacuation of occupants from all exits at the basement of the building has the lowest FED value. On the other hand, depending on the fire source and smoke movement, sometimes occupants cannot use all exits. Therefore, evacuation simulation has been done separately from each exit and evaluated with all FDS results.