Rationalisation of CFD Geometry for Mechanical Smoke Control Systems in Residential Corridors

This paper presents a methodology for reducing meshing requirements where a mechanical smoke control system is provided in residential corridors. It is demonstrated that the entire shaft is not required to reflect the realistic condition, however the meshing does need to consider an overrun of the shaft above the floor of fire origin. It is shown that a minimal amount of overrun is as beneficial as modelling the entire shaft, and a correlation is presented between the mechanical extract rate and the necessary overrun. The use of the correlation in defining modelling geometry allows for meshing and geometry requirements to be rationalised, reducing the computational demand in mechanical smoke control modelling.