Simulation Study on Smoke Movement Characteristics in Elevator Shaft during High-Rise Building Fire

The shafts,such as stairwells and elevator shafts,are the major conduits of smoke movements during high-rise building fire. If the shafts of high-rise buildings are reasonably designed,the natural smoke exhaust in the elevator shaft is of certain possibility due to the chimney effect. Using the method of orthogonal experiment,the field-network simulation is conducted in this paper of the smoke movement characteristics of the‘typical buildings' during the ‘standard fire',where the elevator shaft is regarded as the field region and other spaces as the network region. Coupling calculation of these two regions is made by use of the CONTAM software. The vent size on top of elevator shaft,the air volume of each floor,the airtightness of elevator doors and the impact of different fire floors on smoke movement in elevator shaft,are obtained from the simulation calculation. The results indicate that the top vent size is the most important factor for the neutral plane location and the natural smoke exhaust rate.