Experimental Study on the Characteristics of Fire Smoke Movement in Ultra Thin and Tall Atriums by Hot Smoke Test

Abstract

The characteristics of smoke natural filling in ultra thin and tall atriums were investigated by hot smoke test method. For the fire located on the atrium ground, the smoke touched the side wall first and then extended both upwards and downwards. The smoke plume rising velocity variation can be divided into four stages, different from the normal law in large spaces. In the very early stage of natural filling, the smoke concentration near the height of wall touching point was highest and maintained at a high level in the whole process. The linear trend of temperature increasing in plume center above the height of touching point was broken, far less than the theoretical predictions, which verified the enhancement effect of boundary heat exchange caused by plume restriction. The variation tendencies of smoke density and temperature were similar during the hot smoke test,and there existed a good linear relation between these two parameters. The height-width ratio was calculated as 3.2 averagely by the test results when smoke plume would likely touch atrium walls, and it was very close to the theoretically derived value. This ratio can be used as the definition condition for ultra thin and tall atriums.