Fire Engineering : Smoke Modelling

Smoke Modelling

In practice, the majority of deaths from fire are as a result of smoke inhalation. So, when designing a building it is often necessary to fire engineer a design by carrying out modelling to determine how smoke from a fire would flow within the building to ensure that the occupants have enough time to escape before untenable conditions occur

This is especially the case when the architects are developing an innovative design or to help justify cost savings in areas of building design.

Depending on the design, it may also be possible to help protect evacuation routes by including extra smoke ventilation within the building design, either by providing openings or vents for the smoke to flow out of, or by providing smoke extraction fans.

This would normally require the fire engineer to model smoke flow from within the building.

There are two modelling techniques that can be utilised and are discussed in more detail in the links below:

Zone Modelling

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Modelling