Use of PyroSim for Simulation of Cinema Fire

In this paper, the use of PyroSim, graphical user interface for FDS, for computer simulation of cinema fire is described. Dangerous tendencies of fire and smoke spread in a cinema hall with a curved ceiling and sloping floor were detected. They are analysed and related safety risks are discussed. Index Terms—computer simulation, cinema fire, CFD, FDS, PyroSim I. INTRODUCTION Fires in cinemas are not very frequent. However, due to high concentration of spectators and toxicity of smoke they can be extremely dangerous and cause huge damages. Nowadays, computer simulation can be used as a means imitating real fire in a given structure. It allows to alternate parameters of fire scenarios in tested buildings according to users requirements. Fire is a complex and complicated phenomenon which occurs in variable conditions and circumstances in various environments. There are lots of scenarios, how the fire can behave in the tested space. The fire comprises combustion, thermal radiation, turbulence, fluid dynamics and other physical and chemical processes. Therefore, proper modelling of fire requires a good qualified knowledge about all processes and relevant input parameters characterizing properties of combustible materials and solids in the space in order to properly capture the influence of environment and initial and boundary conditions. Current fire simulators consist of lots of computational procedures based on the space discretization and numerical solving systems of partial derivatives equations which often require a huge computational power. It is important to know assumptions and limitations of these procedures. There are other significant difficulties of fire modelling and simulation such as a big amount of hardly accessible information about combustible materials, complexity of chemical and physical dynamics of burning, etc. In spite of the large advances in knowledge about physical and chemical processes occurring during fire and their mathematical solution, the knowledge is still not sufficient and requires further improvements and development of still better and more reliable simulation systems. Principles of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) were first applied to fire in the seventies leading to the development of zone models and later multi-zone models. The space, in which the fire spreads, is divided there into two separated relatively homogeneous parts: the warmer upper 3