Análise numérica de incêndio em ambiente compartimentado horizontalmente

Abstract

There is no ABNT (Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas) standard in Brazil that deals with compartmentalization as a fire safety tool. The states of the federation, however, issue norms or technical instructions that, once published, are valid in the federative unit of origin. These are prescriptive standards that have often not been tested and verified with regard to their effectiveness in preventing the spread of fire. In addition, the prescriptive rules of horizontal compartmentalization are not considered by building codes issued by municipalities, which, especially in commercial centers, allows the distribution with zero spacing between neighboring buildings. On the other hand, fire environments are complex and unpredictable. They are usually managed by a large number of variables and boundary conditions. The experimental test is expensive, unsafe and difficult to control and standardize. For this reason, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools appear as a viable, safe and economical solution for numerical fire simulation. The computer program Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) has the property of reproducing fires with a very close approximation of the results of laboratory tests. Therefore, this research carried out numerical computer simulations using a CFD tool, called Fire Dynamics Simulator in fire environments. It was found that the rules for clearances in the horizontal compartment in force do not prevent the horizontal spread of the fire in the case of different buildings confrontations and; it is likely, but not certain, that there will be a fire spread between neighboring units in the case of adjacent openings in the same wall. It was verified that the existing distances between commercial stores in street commercial centers that are lower than the norm does, not prevent the horizontal spread of fire between neighboring autonomous stores. The horizontal fire propagation standards need to be reformulated to become more efficient and effective in fire safety.