Case study of a transport centre
Abstract
As part of our degree course we are required to undertake a final year thesis project. Audun Borg and Ronny Jakobsen were selected from /Stord University – College (HSH) along with Richard McKeown, Benoit Guyonneau and Thomas Marshall from Edinburgh University to carry out a thesis project on Fire Safety Engineering: Case Study on Building Design Specifications. The objective of our case study was to carry out a performance-based fire safety analysis and design for a transportation centre. The results of our project are to be presented at The Fifth International Conference on Performance-Based Codes and Fire Safety Design Methods in Luxemburg, October 2004.
We were provided with basic architectural plans showing the layout of the building and a short list of criteria which the building should adhere to. Any information that was required but not given, we could use our engineering judgement and make assumptions with regards to the specifications.
This report considers nearly every aspect of the fire safety at the transporting centre like: alarm organisation, detectors, smoke control etc.
Our strategy to tackling was to carryout a performance-based fire safety analysis. To undertake the performance-based analysis we chose to use three computational programs to model the building and carryout our analysis. It was used Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS) to model the design fires, Simulex to model the evacuation of the building and ABAQUS to model the structural integrity of the building.
Calculations have been carryout to verify these simulations.