Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

This paper describes the smoke filling process of a fire field model based on a self-developed SMEP (Smoke Movement Estimating Program) code to the simulation of fire induced flows in the two types of atrium space containing a ceiling heat flux. The SMEP, using PISO algorithm solves conservation equations for mass, momentum, energy, and species, together with those for the modified k-epsilon turbulence model with buoyancy term. Compressibility is assumed and the perfect gas law is used. Comparison of the calculated upper-layer average temperature and smoke layer interface height with the zone models has shown reasonable agreement. The zone models used are the CFAST developed at the Building and Fire Research Laboratory, NIST, USA and the NBTC one-room of FIRECALC developed at CSIRO, Australia. For atrium with ceiling glass, the consideration of the ceiling heat flux by solar heat may be necessary in order to produce more realistic results. The smoke layer interface heights that are important in fire safety were not as sensitive as the smoke layer temperature to the nature of ceiling heat flux condition. This study highlights the utility of SMEP field modeling for the analysis of smoke movement and temperature in atrium fires.