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Coupled fire/evacuation analysis of the Station Nightclub fire

Coupled fire/evacuation analysis of the Station Nightclub fire

Galea, Edwin R. ORCID: 0000-0002-0001-6665, Wang, Zhaozhi ORCID: 0000-0002-8986-0554, Veeraswamy, Anand, Jia, Fuchen ORCID: 0000-0003-1850-7961, Lawrence, Peter J. ORCID: 0000-0002-0269-0231 and Ewer, John ORCID: 0000-0003-0609-272X (2008) Coupled fire/evacuation analysis of the Station Nightclub fire. In: Fire Safety Science - Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium. IAFSS Symposiums (9). International Association for Fire Safety Science, Greenwich, London, UK, pp. 465-476. ISSN 1817-4299 (doi:https://doi.org/10.3801/IAFSS.FSS.9-465)

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Abstract

In this paper, coupled fire and evacuation simulation tools are used to simulate the Station Nightclub fire. This study differs from the analysis conducted by NIST in three key areas; (1)an enhanced flame spread model and (2)a toxicity generation model are used, (3)the evacuation is coupled to the fire simulation. Predicted early burning locations in the full-scale fire simulation are in line with photographic evidence and the predicted onset of flashover is similar to that produced by NIST. However, it is suggested that both predictions of the flashover time are approximately 15 sec earlier than actually occurred. Three evacuation scenarios are then considered, two of which are coupled with the fire simulation. The coupled fire and evacuation simulation suggests that 180 fatalities result from a building population of 460. With a 15 sec delay in the fire timeline, the evacuation simulation produces 84 fatalities which are in good agreement with actual number of fatalities. An important observation resulting from this work is that traditional fire engineering ASET/RSET calculations which do not couple the fire and evacuation simulations have the potential to be considerably over optimistic in terms of the level of safety achieved by building designs.

Item Type: Conference Proceedings
Title of Proceedings: Fire Safety Science - Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium
Additional Information: [1] This paper was first presented at the Ninth International Symposium (Symposium 9) on Fire Safety Science, held from 21-26 September 2008 at the University of Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany. The Symposium was organized by the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS) and co-hosted by the German Fire Protection Association (Vereinigung zur Förderung des Deutschen Brandschutzes, VFDB), with the local organization by the Research Centre for Fire Protection Technology (Forschungsstelle für Brandschutztechnik) at the University of Karlsruhe. [2] This paper was given within the Evacuation and Human Behavior Case Studies Section of the Symposium.
Uncontrolled Keywords: fire investigation, CFD, compartment fires, egress, hazard evaluation
Subjects: T Technology > TH Building construction
Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software
Pre-2014 Departments: School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Centre for Numerical Modelling & Process Analysis
School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Centre for Numerical Modelling & Process Analysis > Fire Safety Engineering Group
School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Department of Mathematical Sciences
Related URLs:
Last Modified: 03 Mar 2021 16:50
URI: http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/1285

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