Design of a Fire Safety System for Atria under Tropical Storm Attack

Abstract

Atria provide spacious indoor environment for various purposes, such as shopping malls and casinos. The current prescriptive-based fire safety laws cannot provide useful guideline in designing a fire safety system in those buildings. More attentions have been attracted to the utilization of performance-based analysis for fire simulation. Some research studies have verified the design using software package of computational fluid dynamics. As a city located at the coast in the eastern Asia, Macau endures several tough typhoon attacks each year. In this proposal, it is assumed that a fire takes place in an atrium when there is a tropical storm. Chaotic winds blow into an atrium, making the smoke movement unpredictable. First, a performance-based design is to be performed to study this harsh situation. Then, a fire safety system is to be designed to handle the smoke movement