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Escape simulation study puts fire safety in the spotlight
(Source: www.safety-during-fire.com )
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Source: Escape Simulation Report - Lund University - 2010
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Europacable funded an investigation on smoke effluents of 20 types of burning
cables, all commonly used in construction throughout Europe.
This important study evaluated the irritant species from burning cables in a modified prEN
50399 fire test, producing FEC/FED values based on ISO TS 13571.
The results confirmed that acidity is a good predictor of the irritant effects of
emissions.
However, the ISO standard mentions in its scope that these indices can only be used within
(e.g. modeling). For this reason, Europacable initiated a preliminary case study to assess the
possibility of using modern fire safety engineering techniques.
The scope of the project was the evaluation of the evacuation conditions for a realistic
fire scenario, involving two types of cable fires that produce different levels of heat, smoke and
gas. Two types of modeling were used in this project – CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) modeling
by means of the software package FDS (Fire dynamics simulator) and evacuation modeling by means of
the software package Simulex.
The results were then used to calculate FED (fractional effective doses) and FEC (fractional
effective concentration).
Results from these calculations demonstrated that the developed methodology allows
evaluation of critical evacuation conditions based on not only temperature and visibility, but also
on gas composition.
One of the selected cables created critical evacuation conditions for some of the
occupants. In this chosen design fire, irritant gases (HCl, acreolein, formaldehydes) were
produced.
The Escape Simulation Report was presented at the 2010 Interflam Conference
by P. van Hees at Interflam and is available in electronic form on the Lund University website at
www.brand.lth.se/english/publications
(3147.pdf; 2.4 MB)
The report will also be available to view on the ‘Safety during Fire’ website, found at
www.safety-during-fire.com. Here below you can also view the video clip of interviews with the
report’s authors and the full simulation.
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| (Source: www.safety-during-fire.com)
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