Numerical Investigation on the Effects of Human Movements on Smoke Propagation in Building Fire

AbstractThis work aims at analyzing the dynamics mechanism of airflow and fire spread, especially for the effects of human movements on smoke propagation. A numerical investigation method composed of fire parameters and a smoke propagation analysis is proposed in this paper. The diversifications of flow field when human moves are the main part of the smoke propagation analysis, which is based on the dynamic mesh method of computational fluid dynamics. The numerical results show that the movements of human may cause great changes to the velocity and temperature fields in the building. The high temperature and toxic gas follows the human's movement and lead to a great change to the risk distribution in the risk region by promoting the heat transfer effects of convection between the gases with different temperatures. These movements also lead to a farther spread of the cool air that getting through the inlet window, which decreases the average temperature in the room. These effects should be taken into the consideration for the formulation of evacuation routes