CFD Simulations and Assessment of Life Safety in Underground Emporium

The object of this study is to investigate the human evacuation behavior and smoke behavior of a fire in an underground emporium. A practical survey about the occupants characteristics of number, age and gender was carried out. Then, different fire locations and occupants load in the fourth fire protection zone of the underground emporium were conducted numerically by using a CFD model FDS+Evac. And the coupling between the fire conditions and the human behavior were analyzed. The required safe egress time (RSET) and available safe egress time (ASET) of different cases were obtained. Under the same occupants number, the biggest difference of RSET is only 5 s. And ASET is 190 s for the fire far from the exit, 180 s for the fire near the exit. Accordingly we can identify the evacuation process is successful under the survey occupants number in case of a fire. In addition, the air temperature and visibility have a sharp change at a distance respectively 38.9 m near the fire, 42.1 m in the staircase near the exit.