The effect of damper leakage and fire size on the performance of smoke control system in high-rise building

Abstract

The major function of smoke control system is to prevent smoke from penetrating to vertical shaft or stairwell by pressurizing vestibule where is generally located between the vertical shaft and living room. Thus, it is important to calculate the required flow rate of air supply for remaining the pressure difference of 40 ~ 60 Pa between the shaft and vestibule. Heat and mass transfer from fire plume and leaking flows among building structures are representative influence factors on the flow rate. The previous studies, however, focused on calculation of the flow rate of air supply without considering the fire effect and damper leakage. In this study, the effect of damper leakage and fire size on the performance of smoke control system was investigated when considering various parameters, i.e., building size and pressurizing method. The effective damper leakage area was measured in a wind tunnel and used to numerical analysis for parameter study. As the results, in the case of whole floor pressurizing method, the increase rate of the flow rate is about two times than that of the parted floor pressurizing method. Also, the pressure difference steeply decreases at the fire floor whereas it slightly increases at the other floors as the fire size increases.