Gas characteristics and effectiveness of smoke control systems in elevator lobbies during elevator evacuation in a high-rise building fire

ABSTRACTElevator evacuation has attracted increasing attention as an efficient transport method in high-rise buildings, which is one of the most complex and interesting areas of modern fire research. Through a 3D numerical model built from ANSYS Fluent, this paper studied the influence of elevator motion on the gas characteristics as well as the effectiveness of the smoke control system in the lobby during elevator evacuation in a high-rise building fire. Pressure distribution, temperature distribution and CO concentration distribution in the elevator lobby were analyzed. It was found that the elevator motion decreased the pressure in the elevator lobby while increased the temperature and CO concentration, which indicated that more fire smoke had spread into the lobby when the elevators moved and the effectiveness of the smoke control systems had been weaken. When the elevator velocity was increased from 0 m/s to 2 m/s, the lowest pressure in the lobby was decreased by 566.7%; the temperature line was mos...