Numerical research on the smoke spread process of thin-tall atrium space under various ceiling height

Abstract The thin-tall atrium is very popular in modern buildings, but its special space form brings a new challenge to smoke alarm system. Therefore, the smoke spread process of thin-tall atrium have been investigated in this paper via numerical simulation, which is very important to the design and installation of smoke alarm systems. The ceiling heights of 4.0m, 6.0m, 8.0m, 10.0m and 12.0m have been discussed, and the temperature and obscuration rate of smoke have been studied via the fire dynamics simulator (FDS) which is a wildly used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software in fire safety field. The results show that the smoke temperature couldn’t reach 74°C while the ceiling height is over 8.0m. Furthermore, the relationship between the ceiling heights and the response time of smoke detector is a line relationship, with a R value equal to 0.983. The layout model of line smoke detector (LSD) has been investigated. The response time is approximately 1.0s later for the length direction than the width one under the horizontal mounted method. The vertical model of LSD doesn’t have a ratio relationship between the ceiling heights and the response time, and the response time is about 20s later than the horizontal one. The result is useful in the fire alarm system design and insulation for the thin-tall atrium.