Modification of Interaction Forces between Smoke and Evacuees

Abstract

The most used fire effect models on evacuees are only focused on the physical capacity of the evacuees. However, some of the evacuees in a fire situation continuously move through the familiar route, although the familiar route is smoke-filled and they know that they are moving towards the fire source. Thus, the additional evacuation models are required for considering the behavioral changes due to the psychological pressure when the evacuees are moving through the smoke or towards the fire source. In this study, the inner smoke region force is modified to improve the accuracy and practicality of the BR-smoke model by varying the walking speed according to the smoke density. Additionally, the BR-smoke model is applied to FDS+Evac to compare the simulation results of the modified BR-smoke model with those of existing models. Based on the results, the evacuation characteristics inside the smoke region can be improved by using the modified BR-smoke model because the evacuees are continuously influenced by the modified inner smoke force inside the smoke region. However, additional studies for determining more reliable evacuee psychological factors are required to improve the reality of the modified BR-smoke model.