A SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE FOR THE INTEGRATION OF SMOKE PROPAGATION SIMULATION, EVACUATION SIMULATION, AND BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING

Abstract

A new software system architecture was designed to integrate smoke propagation simulation, evacuation simulation, and Building Information Modeling (BIM). The integrated software prototype automates the majority of the simulation workloads, enabling seamless data _ow from BIM to smoke propagation simulation and evacuation simulation, and thus providing architects rapid feedback in design decision process.

As the key to integrating smoke propagation with BIM, the research produced two spatial transformation algorithms and a room selection algorithm to resolve the incompatibility caused by the need to simplify the BIM representations for use in CFAST. With these algorithms, smoke propagation simulation of real-world buildings can be easily performed on a BIM model. To demonstrate the integration of smoke propagation simulation and BIM, a software prototype was developed with Revit Architecture and CFAST. In addition, a visualization module was developed to present simulation results, which are usually in thousands of lines of numbers, in a visually understandable format.

A simple BIM-based multi-agent evacuation simulation model was developed to provide architects with more informative design feedback. At each simulation step, each agent collects the data of the surrounding environment, such as CO concentration at their head level and room temperature. The results of the simulation can be visualized as graphs and animations which help architects to visually identify bottlenecks and examine the clarity of circulation design.

The validity of the algorithms was tested by FDS simulations and CFAST simulations. The analyses of the FDS validation tests showed that the transformation algorithms introduced 5-10% error for the majority of the test cases. A few extreme cases showed more than 10% error. The analysis tests showed that the room selection algorithm introduced 2-7% error.

Intensive use of the software can provide insights to a designer that may result in new solutions to increase _re safety. A series of FDS simulations as experiments scrutinized how ceiling design and door design affect building _re safety. The results of the experiments showed that opening 16-25% of the ceiling can deter smoke propagation up to 60% by holding smoke inside plenum area.