A comparison of the use of fire zone and field models for simulating atrium smoke-filling processes

The smoke filling process for the three types of atrium spaces commonly built in Hong Kong are simulated using the two types of deterministic pre model: zone models and field models. The zone models used are the FIRST, CFAST, and CCFM. VENTS models developed at the Building and Fire Research Laboratories, NIST, USA and the NBTC one-room model of FIRECALC developed at CSIRO, Australia. The field model is a self-developed fire field model based on computational fluid dynamics theories. The results predicted by the two approaches are very similar. Simulation using a field model requires much more computing time compared with the use of a zone model, bur it can give more detailed information on the fire-induced pow and temperature fields. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.