Numerical Simulation of the Airport Evacuation Process under Fire Conditions

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the rate of formation of selected fire threats in the terminal of a local passenger airport and to estimate the time for safe and effective evacuation of occupants of the terminal covered by fire. To achieve this goal, the PyroSim and Pathfinder software was used. The essence of the studies was to determine the time of effective and safe evacuation at two variants of the ignition source and differentiated configuration of the computational mesh and dimensions of elements (a total of four calculation scenarios). Obtained results from computer simulations using Pathfinder indicate that the determined evacuation time for the assumed assumptions and fire scenarios was 46 s for an evacuation of 50 people and 82 s for an evacuation of 600 people. From the point of view of safety of the terminal under analysis, especially safe evacuation under fire threat conditions, the critical parameters that were mainly focused on were the temperature distribution (in quantitative terms) in the immediate vicinity of the fire source and the maximum smoke level (in qualitative terms). Simulations with PyroSim proved that in the adopted calculation scenarios (variants), the value of temperature and the degree of smoke will not reach a level threatening the safe and effective evacuation. In other words, comparisons of the simulation results give reason to conclude that in the building in question, users can safely evacuate outside the building before the critical fire parameters are exceeded.

Keywords

• airport evacuation
• simulation of evacuation
• simulation of fire development