Investigation of Atrium Smoke Exhaust Effectiveness

This posting is by permission of ASHRAE and is presented for educational purposes only. ASHRAE does not endorse or recommend commercial products or services. This paper may not be copied and/or distributed electronically or in paper form without permission of ASHRAE. Contact ASHRAE at www.ashrae.org. Opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASHRAE. Written questions and comments regarding this paper should be received at ASHRAE no later than July 18, 1997. ABSTRACT This paper presents results of a project initiated by ASHRAE and the National Research Council of Canada. The project applies both physical and numerical modeling techniques to atrium smoke exhaust systems to investigate the effectiveness of such systems and to develop guidelines for their design. This paper compares experimental results obtained from testing a physical model of a mechanically exhausted atrium space with results of two sets of numerical predictions of the same space. One set of numerical predictions uses standard plume equations; the other set uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This paper also investigates the effect of fire size and opening location on the conditions in the atrium.