Atrium Smoke Exhaust and Technical Issues on Hot Smoke Tests

Atriums are commonly designed in big building complexes while developing big cities in the Far East. It is not clear what the fire safety provisions are; nor whether those installed systems would work as expected. Dynamic smoke exhaust systems used to be installed. Other fire protection systems such as drencher system and sprinkler systems might be required. If the design of the dynamic smoke exhaust systems does not comply with the prescriptive code, hot smoke tests are required to be carried out in site for evaluating their performance. The smoke layer interface height induced by an agreed design fire is commonly checked. Technical issues on the procedure of hot smoke tests will be discussed in this paper. Problems encountered in designing smoke exhaust systems in the Far East will be outlined. A practical case is taken as an example. Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in evaluating the performance of atrium smoke exhaust systems will also be discussed. CFD is now a common engineering tool for designing smoke management systems by investigating the potential fire and smoke hazard. A typical scenario of having a fire in an adjacent shopping mall is considered. Performance of the dynamic smoke exhaust system in the atrium will be simulated.