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Elsevier B.V. INTER ENG 2017 Darmon
Elsevier B.V. INTER ENG 2017 Darmon
com
ScienceDirect
Procedia Manufacturing 00 (2018) 000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
Abstract
Romanian fire safety regulations concerning the rooms with high density of people, as conference halls, auditoria, theatres, are
based on prescriptions. The Eurocode SR EN 1991-1-2 allows the application of alternative design employing CFD methods,
without specifying any further guidance to their practical praxis. This research is intended to give a better insight of the use of
CFD for a code compliant fire safety design.
© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 11th International Conference Interdisciplinarity in
Engineering.
1. Introduction
Auditoria spaces are assembly places, with a high density of persons which are not familiar with the building. The
occupants can have a wide variety of different age, culture, affiliation, therefore the life and safety provisions will
need to cover the whole range of variables in order to design a building having a satisfactory safety level. The most
of the building design codes have general requirements as: “Buildings shall be designed so that satisfactory escape
can be provided in the event of fire”, stated by the Swedish legislation [1].
Assembly occupancy has special provisions within each country, due to the higher design occupant densities. A
survey, carried out by Forell and co. [2], compared the standard codes for evacuation of eight European countries
and China and USA and revealed that there is a disperse range of the results differing by a factor of three, related to
hand calculations and correlations of traveling times, travel distances and occupant density.
Romanian fire safety regulations [3] concerning the rooms with high density of people, as conference halls,
auditoria, theatres, are based on prescriptions. According to the occupancy type, it is specified a maximum travel
distance and a maximum time for evacuation on one or two separate ways. Based on the required figures, it results a
constant walking speed of 0.4 m/s and there is no mention of other factors as occupant’s age, sex, familiarity with
the building, etc.
In order to demonstrate that a building is safe, according to Rumanian regulations [3], one should only compare
the walking distances on the building plans to the required distances and to mention the egress times. However, it is
often the case that the new buildings and special structures do not fit within the code requirements. The revision of
fire safety regulations is much slower than the industrial and technological progress, slowing the adoption of some
new sustainable materials or design solutions.
The Eurocode SR EN 1991-1-2 allows the application of alternative design employing CFD methods, without
specifying any further guidance to their practical application.
This research paper is intended to give a better insight into the use of CFD for a code compliant fire safety design
and a way of overcoming the prescriptive regulations drawbacks by applying a performance based design solution to
a medium size auditorium, having three levels of sitting places.
Nomenclature
The Rumanian Fire Safety Code [3] does not have any mention about the tenability criteria; therefore, within this
paper, it has been taken into account the international guidance and standards.
According to the NFPA 5000 [4], when an engineering analysis is performed, it shall demonstrate “that the
building is designed to keep the smoke layer interface above the highest unprotected opening to adjoining spaces, or
1830 mm above the highest floor level of exit access open to the atrium, for a period equal to 1½ times the
calculated egress time or 20 minutes, whichever is greater.”
NFPA 101 [5] and SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering [6] specify three sets of criteria to be met
along the escape routes, in order to prove compliance with the accepted tenability limits.
ASET = tu (3)
Where:
td = time to detection from fire initiation (minutes)
tpm = pre-movement time period for occupants (minutes)
tt = travel time for occupants to move to an exit (minutes)
tu = time to untenable conditions (minutes)
openings through the roof. A total number of 4 fans, each extracting 11.5 m3/s will be provided at the roof level in
order to clear the smoke and combustion particulates. The ceiling of the auditorium is designed to be a suspended
acoustic ceiling with permanent slot openings for return air to reach the plenum above. The openings provide a total
of 14.5 m2 in area.
The CFD analysis has been carried out for the validation of the smoke control strategy and to provide the ASET
for the evacuation analysis.
The auditorium is divided into the Lower Auditorium and the Upper Auditorium with separated evacuation routes
marked as it is shown in the figures below.
Fig. 1. Lower Auditorium (left) and Upper Auditorium (right) evacuation routes
All staff is expected to be aware of an emergency situation and to react accordingly. The staff is expected to have
a rational behaviour and the ability to take and implement decisions independently during an emergency situation.
3. Evacuation analysis
The Lower Auditorium has a total capacity of 510 persons on seats. The occupants performing on the stage are
not taken into account for this analysis. On the stage there are two doors and it is assumed that the occupants can
evacuate in less than 1 minute even if one of the doors is blocked by the fire.
The maximum travel distance is measured from the centre of the room and is approximate 23 m.
The worst case scenario for the Lower Auditorium, taken into account CFD Analysis is Scenario 1a, when the
total volume extract rate is 23m3/s and the mobile partition walls are closed. The model assumes a delay of 50 s
between the time when the second smoke detector activates and the time when the mobile partition walls are
completely closed.
The time when the second smoke detector has been actuated, t sd, has been retrieved from the numerical
simulation results:
tsd = 23 sec
The pre-movement time period for occupants (minutes): tpm = 0.5 min (30 sec)
The Lower Auditorium has four exits, each having a width of 1820 mm. In case of emergency it is assumed that
the occupants will evenly spread towards all four exits. Therefore, the maximum number of occupants for a single
exit, based on the total number of persons in the sale, will be:
The moderate flow for 1820 mm width is 2 persons/ sec. The time necessary for all the occupants to pass through
an exit door is:
The most remote person from a door has to walk 23 m, meaning that it will reach the exit after 23 sec if the
walking speed is 1m/s. The person closest to a door is approximate 6 m away. Therefore, it is assumed that the total
travel time will be:
RSET (Required Safe Evacuation Time) = 1.3 min + 0.5 min + 1.16 min = 2. 96 min => 3 minutes
The worst case scenario for the Upper Auditorium, taken into account CFD Analysis is Scenario 1b, when the
mobile partition walls fail to close and the smoke accumulates at the rear upper auditorium. In this model the
extraction system and alarm are assumed to be “double knock activation” systems. The time when the second smoke
detector has been actuated, tsd, = td in this case.
tsd = 31 sec
The pre-movement time period for occupants (minutes): tpm = 0.5 min (30 sec)
The Upper Auditorium has four exits, each having a width of 1220 mm. In case of emergency it is assumed that
the occupants will evenly spread towards all four exits. Therefore, the maximum number of occupants for a single
exit, based on the total number of persons in the hall, will be:
For a moderate flow capacity of 1 person per 1 m2, a clear width of 1.22 m will permit a flow of 1.33
persons/sec. The time necessary for all the occupants to pass through an exit door is:
The most remote person from a door has to walk 19.5 m, meaning that it will reach the exit after 9.75 sec if the
walking speed on a slanted surface is 0.5m/s. The person closest to a door is approximate 1.5 m away. Therefore, it
is assumed that the total travel time will be:
8 Ruxandra Darmon/ Procedia Manufacturing 00 (2018) 000–000
RSET (Required Safe Evacuation Time) = 0.52 min + 0.5 min + 1.15 min = 2.17 minutes
4. Results
The results from the CFD analysis have been compared against the evacuation calculations to assess whether
tenable conditions are maintained for the safe evacuation of all the occupants present within the Auditorium space.
The scenarios where the mobile partition walls are open are the worst for the occupants of the Upper Auditorium.
The smoke starts to accumulate below the acoustic ceiling and it travels up towards the last row of chairs, forming a
uniform layer. It is considered that in the Upper Auditorium, tenable conditions are maintained for 3.5 minutes.
5. Conclusion
Analyzing the results of the numerical simulations it can be concluded that tenable conditions are maintained for
the entire period of 20 minutes simulation time, except for the cases when the mobile partition walls remain open,
when the tenable conditions for the Upper Auditorium are only maintained for 3.5 minutes. However, it is assumed
that the occupants of the Upper Auditorium have a good visibility of the whole volume space and it is likely that
they will notice the fire in the very early stages and will proceed to evacuate. The 3.5 minutes time is considered
sufficient for the complete evacuation of the last chair rows, given that the occupants have minimal travel distances
to the exit doors.
This study case shows an example of a performance based design. The required evacuation time for Auditorium
is lower than the available time estimated from the CFD analysis. Thus, the current means of egress, the number of
exits and the actual widths are considered to be acceptable to evacuate occupants prior to untenable conditions
within the Auditorium.
References