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Numerical study of critical re-entrainment velocity of fire smoke within the street canyons with different building height ratios

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Abstract

Traffic accident may bring vehicle fire in the street canyons. With its high temperature and numerous hazardous materials, the smoke produced by the vehicle fire may cause serious damage to the human body and the properties nearby, such as the glass curtain walls of buildings. The influence of the ambient air flow speed and street aspect ratio on the dispersion of fire smoke in street canyon has been analyzed by FDS software and theoretical analysis in this study. The impact of different windward building heights and different ambient air flow speeds u0 on the fire smoke were investigated. The results show that the fire smoke tilts towards the opposing direction of the ambient air flow within the street canyon, while the ambient air flow is perpendicular to the windward building. The results indicate that the critical re-entrainment velocity decreases at first, and then increases until it attains a constant with the building height ratio H1/H2. Finally, a predictive model of the critical re-entrainment velocity was developed under different building height ratios H1/H2.

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Abbreviations

h :

The height at an arbitrary point

H 1 :

Windward building height

H 2 :

Leeward building height

\( \dot{Q} \) :

Heat release rate

t :

Move time of fire smoke in vertical direction

t ′ :

Move time of fire smoke in horizontal direction

u :

Air flow speed

W :

The width of street canyon

y :

The vertical distance from building top edge to arbitrary point

z 0 :

The aerodynamic roughness length of the area

κ :

Coefficient

η :

Coefficient

ν :

The speed of fire smoke in vertical direction

0:

Ambient

c :

Critical

x :

The x axis

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Acknowledgments

The work in this study was supported by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2018M640582), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51408181).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Automotive and Transportation Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, Anhui, China

    Quanli Wang, TaoTao Zhou, Changfa Tao & Qin Shi

  2. School of Civil Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, Anhui, China

    Qin Liu & Peixiang He

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  1. Quanli Wang
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  2. TaoTao Zhou
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  3. Qin Liu
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  5. Changfa Tao
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All authors contributed equally in the preparation of this manuscript.

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Correspondence to Changfa Tao or Qin Shi.

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Wang, Q., Zhou, T., Liu, Q. et al. Numerical study of critical re-entrainment velocity of fire smoke within the street canyons with different building height ratios. Environ Sci Pollut Res 26, 23319–23327 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-05549-5

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