In January 2022, a fire originating in a second-floor apartment of a 19-story high-rise in New York City claimed the lives of 17 people. The loss of life was largely due to smoke spread. Physical reconstruction of full-scale fire events are impractical, and therefore computational and reduced-scale models are utilized. The project focused on constructing, evaluating and comparing the critical aspects of a physical model to the computational zone model, CFAST (Consolidated Fire and Smoke Transport) at a reduced-scale. A series of fire tests with varying door positions were conducted in the lab and simulated in CFAST. Temperature, velocity, and smoke spread were measured in key areas. Analysis concluded that CFAST approximated the general trends of the fire test data with reasonable agreement for temperatures, but a wider range of variability for smoke spread and flows. Both the physical and numerical model demonstrated how quickly smoke can spread through this type of building and the importance of door positions.

• This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

Creator

• Cummings, Grace
• Benoit, Abigail
• Guertin, Peter
• Guarneri, Matthew

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• E-project-042723-095505
• 105826

Keyword

• Fire
• CFAST
• Fire Dynamics
• Reduced-scale
• High-Rise
• Smoke

Advisor

• Puchovsky, Milosh T.

Year

• 2023

Date created

• 2023-04-27

Resource type

• Major Qualifying Project

Major

• Fire Protection Engineering
• Mechanical Engineering

Source

• E-project-042723-095505

Rights statement

• In Copyright

Last modified

• 2023-06-18