Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

In order to clarify predictability and affordability of predictive models of smoke movement for the application to subway stations, reproducibility of smoke movement in a subway station by a control volume zone model and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) has been verified against fire tests using a station actually in service under various conditions of the shutters in the staircases between the platform and the concourse, and different modes and capacities of smoke control. This comparative study has revealed that good reproducibility can be achieved on all tested conditions by relatively simple k-epsilon CFD code with rather rough grid arrangements which can be run on PC; zone models could reproduce the smoke movement unless the staircases between the platform and the concourse is left open. The comparative study has also revealed significant advantages of the zone model in the treatment of facility conditions which are the main focus in fire safety design.