The analysis of the natural smoke filling times in an atrium

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation on the scenarios of the natural smoke filling times in an atrium due to a located floor fire. Based on the Heskestad's correlation, the heat release rate and the effective height of the fire source were transformed into an equation associated with the diameter and perimeter of the fire source. Neglecting the thermal effect for heat release due to relatively small temperature rise in the atrium and applying the assumption of mass conservation, the height of smoke layer interface can be derived. In this study, the various plume models such as McCaffrey's correlation, Zukoski's correlation, Thomas's correlation and NFPA 92B's correlation are considered with both steady fire and unsteady fire situations. The comparisons between the theoretical results and the experimental data were also made and discussed. Copyright 2010 Guan-Yuan Wu and Ruu-Chang Chen.