Numerical Studies on Smoke Filling Process in an Airport Terminal

Numerical studies on hot smoke tests at an airport terminal were performed. In that airport terminal, field measurements on the smoke filling process with and without operating the ventilation system were carried out in the actual site, giving sufficient experimental results for verifying fire models. In this paper, a fire field model is assessed. The computational fluid dynamics program selected was CC-EXACT, a package modified from the EXACT program developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The fire was taken as a heat source with two sets of numerical simulations carried out. The first set was on natural smoke filling for understanding the smoke filling process when the ventilation system is shut down. The second set was on assessing the performance of the mechanical ventilation system. Results predicted by the field model are compared with those measured at the site. It is found that results predicted from this computational fluid dynamics program agreed reasonably well with those experimental data. Therefore, the model is good enough for studying the smoke filling process in large halls.