Optimization of positive pressure ventiliation tactic for wind-driven high-rise fires
BY Prabodh Panindre, Sunil Kumar, Atulya Narendranath, Vinay Manjunath, Venkata Chintaluri, and Vishal Prajapati
Abstract
Positive Pressure Ventilation (PPV) is a firefighting tactic that can mitigate the spread of fire and the combustion products to improve the safety of firefighters and civilians in wind-driven high-rise fires. The performance of a PPV tactic in wind-driven high-rise fires depends on various parameters that include wind speed, control of stairwell doors, number of fans, fan positions and placements, fire location etc. This paper describes the influence of these parameters on the efficacy of
PPV operation that was studied by simulating wind-driven high-rise fire scenarios using computational fluid dynamics software Fluent 12.0 and NIST0s Fire dynamic simulator (FDS 5.0). The results obtained from Fluent and FDS were found to be in close agreement with each other and have been used to optimize the PPV operation for better performance.