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Smoke and evacuation modelling of multi-compartment building for nuclear applications

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Abstract

Fire events in nuclear power plants represent a significant potential hazard and are an important contributor to the overall operational risks of these facilities. Consequently, a detailed understanding of fire and smoke propagation behaviour in such applications is required for fire performance-based engineering and risk assessment. This paper presents computational fluid dynamics modelling of a postulated fire scenario and occupant evacuation in a typical multi compartment nuclear building. The NIST Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS) was used to model fire and smoke propagation by adopting large eddy simulation turbulence modelling approach. FDS simulation benchmarking was first performed against available experimental data of a two-storey compartment. Following this, a study was conducted to understand the smoke propagation, distribution of temperature, toxic gas concentrations, and smoke optical density inside a typical multi-compartment nuclear building. The effect of ventilation on the fire and smoke spread was also investigated. Human evacuation modelling was conducted to determine the required evacuation time and toxic gas dose for each occupant. The FDS predicted smoke parameters, including smoke optical density and toxic gas concentrations, were used as inputs to the evacuation modelling. The results suggest that ventilation flows decrease the smoke optical density due to smoke dilution and thereby result in a shorter time for the occupants to evacuate.

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Abbreviations

CNL:

Canadian nuclear laboratories

CNSC:

Canadian nuclear safety commission

FDS:

Fire dynamic simulator

FED:

Fractional effective dose

FPSA:

Fire probabilistic safety analysis

HGL:

Hot gas layer

HRR:

Heat Release Rate

LES:

Large eddy simulation

NPP:

Nuclear power plant

NEA:

Nuclear energy agency

NIST:

National institute of standards and technology

OECD:

Organisation for economic c-operation and development

PRISME:

Propagation d'un incendie pour des scénarios multi-locaux élémentaires

U.S. NRC:

United states nuclear regulatory commission

F :

Force

v i :

Velocity/speed

m:

Mass

CFL:

Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy

τi :

Relaxation factor

i :

Occupant i

j :

Occupant j

w :

Wall

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Funding

This study has been funded by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, under the auspices of the Federal Nuclear Science and Technology Program.

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  1. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, Chalk River, Ontario, K0J 1J0, Canada

    A. M. Bayomy, Q. Chen, K. Podila, L. Sun & T. Beuthe

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  1. A. M. Bayomy
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Correspondence to A. M. Bayomy.

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Bayomy, A.M., Chen, Q., Podila, K. et al. Smoke and evacuation modelling of multi-compartment building for nuclear applications. Heat Mass Transfer 58, 383–394 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-021-03072-3

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