IN-EX: in-house key disciplines – The simulation of heat and smoke propagation

Today, the issue of ensuring a cost-effective energy supply, especially for industrial buildings that are used for production, is becoming much more important than ever before.

Today, the issue of ensuring a cost-effective energy supply, especially for industrial buildings that are used for production, is becoming much more important than ever before.

One possible answer is to add solar panels to the electricity grid, but to achieve significant energy savings requires the installation of a significant amount of equipment, requiring a significant amount of space. An obvious solution may be to cover the roof with solar panels, but in addition to the numerous mechanical devices on the roof, the installation of these panels may also be complicated by the heat and smoke extraction domes, which are inevitable from the perspective of fire safety.

The National Fire Safety Code and the relevant Technical Guidelines for Fire Safety specify the exact effective opening areas required, but if we can simulate that the heat and smoke extraction is effective even at smaller sizes, the opening areas, and thus the number of domes, can be reduced by half. During the simulation, fires with high smoke development potential are set in the most unfavourable locations for intervention, and then it is checked whether the firefighting intervention conditions are met, taking into account the spreading and the opening times. This can be seen in the video below.

If it can be demonstrated to the authority that no temperatures are generated that would endanger the people trying to escape or would cause the ignition of additional materials, and no smoke concentrations are generated that would prevent firefighters from being able to approach the fire, there is no obstacle to the use of reduced surfaces. Thanks to the professionalism of our colleagues and our state-of-the-art IT tools, we can now carry out these tests in-house.