One-way coupling of fire and egress modeling for realistic evaluation of evacuation process
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Author(s)
Cheong, H-I
Wu, Z
Majumdar, A
Yotto Ochieng, W
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In the discipline of fire engineering, computational simulation tools are used to evaluate the available safe egress time (ASET) and required safe egress time (RSET) of a building fire. ASET and RSET are often analyzed separately, using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and crowd dynamics, respectively. Although there are advantages to coupling the ASET and RSET analysis to quantify tenability conditions and reevaluate evacuation time within a building, the coupling process is computationally complex, requiring multiple steps. The coupling setup can be time-consuming, particularly when the results are limited to the modeled scenario. In addition, the procedure is not uniform throughout the industry. This paper presents the successful one-way coupling of CFD and crowd dynamics modeling through a new simplified methodology that captures the impact of fractional effective dose (FED) and reduced visibility from smoke on the individual evacuee’s movement and the human interaction. The simulation tools used were Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) and Oasys MassMotion for crowd dynamics. The coupling was carried out with the help of the software development kit of Oasys MassMotion in two different example geometries: an open-plan room and a floor with six rooms and a corridor. The results presented in this paper show that, when comparing an uncoupled and a coupled simulation, the effects of the smoke lead to different crowd density profiles, particularly closer to the exit, which elongates the overall evacuation time. This coupling method can be applied to any geometry because of its flexible and modular framework.
Date Issued
2021-12
Online Publication Date
2023-05-24T14:59:41Z
Date Acceptance
2021-10-01
ISSN
0361-1981
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Start Page
1244
End Page
1259
Journal / Book Title
Transportation Research Record
Volume
2675
Issue
12
Copyright Statement
© National Academy of Sciences: Transportation Research Board 2021.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
License URI
Identifier
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03611981211032636
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Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2021-10-08