Smoke ventilation strategy for a timber structure building

Abstract

Timber is a sustainable material and a renewable resource. In Romania, there is certain reluctance towards the use of timber for public buildings as schools, hospitals or theatres, partly due to the wood’s poor fire behavior. Nevertheless, there are compensatory fire safety measures which can be implemented to improve the building overall fire resistance and fire behavior performance, but the smoke hazard represents another concern for the safety of the occupants during egress. With a suitable fire safety strategy in place, timber can be used for a wide range of public buildings, having great advantages as low cost and low embedded energy, good insulation and esthetical properties, etc. The use of numerical methods to optimize the smoke ventilation system into a building can save valuable resources and time during the design process. The article describes the numerical simulations, carried out with Fire Dynamics Simulator 6, for validation of the mechanical smoke control system within a timber structure building designed for education purpose.