Smoke Clearance in an Underground Car Park using the Jet Fan System

Fires in underground car parks are an important issue. This paper investigates the effect of the jet fan system on the smoke clearance in an underground car park using CFD simulations. Two fire locations were considered with a steady state fire source of 4 MW. The consideration of the fire zone was also studied. The underground car park used in this study is 5290 m2 in area with a height of 3.7 m. A comparison between CFD results and analytical correlations for the fire modeling was made. The ANSYS FLUENT 14.0 software was used for all simulations. The results showed that the temperature is limited to the zone, where the fire is detected, and it is within an accepted range. The CO2 mass fraction was presented and showed how the jet fans contribute in reducing the smoke density and hence improve the visibility. It was found that dividing the car park into zones is highly recommended and should be taken in the design of the jet fan system.