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Factors Affecting the Make-Up Air and Their Influence on the Dynamics of Atrium Fires

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Abstract

In case of fire, constructive features of typical atria could favor the spread of smoke. This makes the design of their smoke control and management systems a challenging task. Five full-scale fire experiments in the literature have been analyzed and numerically compared in FDS v6 to explore the influence of the make-up air. However, these fire experiments cover only a limited number of set-ups and conditions, and require further numerical modeling to obtain a deeper understanding of the makeup air influence. Subsequently, 84 simulations with FDS v6 have been carried out, considering different vent areas (air velocity from 0.4 to 5.3 m/s) and configurations, two heat release rates (2.5 and 5 MW), and two pan locations. It is demonstrated that make-up air velocities lower than the prescribed limit of 1 m/s, by the international codes, may induce adverse conditions. Based on our results, we recommended fire engineers to numerically assess the fire scenario with even lower velocity values. The results also show that asymmetric configurations are prone to induce circulation around the flame which can contribute to the formation of longer flames and fire whirls. Thus, this numerical study links two fire types allowing the connection of pool fires to fire whirls, which completely differ in behaviour and smoke filling, for the sake of design of fire safety.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Fundación Mapfre, Institute for Research in Technology (IIT) of Universidad Pontificia Comillas, and the Spanish MINECO (Subdirección General de Gestión de Ayudas a la Investigación) under Project DPI2014-59292-C3-3. Moreover, these authors want to acknowledge the companies Sodeca, Xtralis and Gabriele Vigne of JVVA for the support during the full-scale fire experiments. Additionally, it is important to thank National Institute of Standard and Technology for making FDS available.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Research in Technology, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, C/ Santa Cruz de Marcenado 26, 28015, Madrid, Spain

    Pablo Ayala & Alexis Cantizano

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Guillermo Rein

  3. Fluid Dynamics Division of the Department of Mining and Mechanical Engineering, Universidad de Jaén, Jaén, Spain

    Cándido Gutiérrez-Montes

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  1. Pablo Ayala
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  2. Alexis Cantizano
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  4. Cándido Gutiérrez-Montes
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Correspondence to Alexis Cantizano.

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Ayala, P., Cantizano, A., Rein, G. et al. Factors Affecting the Make-Up Air and Their Influence on the Dynamics of Atrium Fires. Fire Technol 54, 1067–1091 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-018-0725-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-018-0725-z

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