Arguably, one of the most important requirement a building have to meet in case of fire is to ensure the safe evacuation of its users and the work of rescue teams. Consequently, issues related to the risks associated with falling parts of facades are fairly well known around Europe. Even though not equally well defined as other fire safety requirements concerning glazed facades, there is plenty of test methods for assessment of facades regarding falling parts, mostly based on an approach related to fire spread. In this paper selection of test method for assessment of facades regarding falling parts is briefly presented. However, focus of this work is on fire test of typical glazed segment of façade performed in ITB Laboratory. Results of the test positively verifies conjecture that solutions with glass units configured with thin, tempered glass panes on the outer side should pose no threat. However, the question has been raised whether the behaviour of other glass unit solutions (with additional coatings or laminated) would be similar.

The paper is focused on the topic of smoke control in a confined, underground cellar area of a historical building, that is undergoing conversion to a restaurant. Similar venues were host to some of the most devastating fires in history. We have investigated the performance of a novel solution, “smart smoke control (SSC)”, and compared its performance with “traditional” smoke venting solution. The investigation was based on CFD simulations performed in a commercial code ANSYS Fluent, modified with user-defined functions to include for the steering algorithm of the SSC. The simulation results for a traditional system were unsatisfactory, while the SSC removing substantially more smoke (approx. 50% more) has provided tenable conditions over the whole course of the analysis. The results indicate that smoke control solutions based on the adaptive performance of the smoke exhaust fan, based on the conditions within the protected premise, can be favourable for compartments with the limited size of the smoke reservoir or limited space available for ducts. These findings are also true for existing buildings, where it may be advantageous to replace the existing smoke control solution with SSC. Future investigations should include full-scale experiments, and improvements in the simple algorithms used so far.

ARTICLES YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN, Grzegorz Kimbar Abstract. This paper is a proposal of a new device that may be used as a component of natural smoke ventilation systems -an external aerodynamic baffle used to limit the wind effect at the most adverse angle. Natural ventilation is not only affected by the external wind, but also dependent on the angle of wind attack. It has been proven, that at angles between 45° to 60° the performance of such device is the lowest. This is the reason why additional device is proposed -external baffle that could hypothetically increase the performance at chosen angles. The purpose of this paper is to explore this idea by numerical modelling of such external elements on a validated natural ventilator model, with use of ANSYS® Fluent® CFD model.

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