Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

This paper aims at illustrating the potential flexibility of the use of smoke movement modeling for the purpose of elaborating tables or diagrams specifying in a straightforward way minimal values of ventilation parameters such as vent areas or fan-powered flow rates, for the control of smoke flows in the case of building fires. This is particularly relevant to the case of atrium buildings since the regulatory codes in force in France have so far proved unsatisfactory for smoke control. Despite the number of parameters intervening in smoke movement processes that cannot all be controlled at design level, such an approach has the advantage of clearly highlighting theoretical assumptions, especially with regard to safety criteria. The effectiveness of a smoke control system based upon such assumptions can thus be more easily assessed. However, this may sometimes result in very high levels of ventilation rates, leading to a potential increase in implementation costs.