Smoke Control System Study For A Semi-open Commercial Atrium

Large atriums with glass roofs are commonly used to cover the internal streets in retail buildings to create a comfortable indoor environment. However, they brought difficulty to fire protection design as the atriums connect upper and lower floors to form one space, in which smoke can accumulate and spread. To control the fire risk, it is important to design a proper smoke control strategy to minimize the fire risk to people inside and prevent fire spread.Using one mixed retail development as an example, this dissertation conducts a comprehensive study to the smoke control strategy for a grand atrium. A concept of mixed smoke control strategy was proposed, which combined the use of dynamic and static smoke control system. The computational simulation software FDS was verified and then used to study the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. A number of alternative smoke control design schemes were proposed and compared. Analysis results show that the proposed use of both dynamic and static smoke control is the most effective scheme to remove smoke in the semi-open atrium. The smoke descending rate can be well controlled and the smoke will not cause any danger to the occupants below.Based on the recommended somke control strategy, factors that affect the smoke extraction efficiency including makeup air mode, internal temperature, outside wind, etc. were analyzed and discussed. The above factors are studied to ensure the efficiency of the proposed smoke control strategy. From the study, key factors that affect the smoke extraction are identified and recommendations are made regarding the design of similar atriums in the future.