Confinement of fire-induced smoke and carbon monoxide transportation by air curtain in channels

Experimental and numerical studies were performed in this paper to study the possibility of utilizing air curtain for confinement of fire-induced smoke and carbon monoxide transportation along channels. Bench scale experiments were preliminarily performed in a 3.6 m long model channel. Complementary computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was carried out by Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) for an 88 m long full scale channel, in order to see the longitudinal carbon monoxide concentration distribution along the real channel with air curtain discharged. Results showed that both the smoke and CO gases released by the fire were well confined to almost remain in the near fire region of the channel at one side of the air curtain. The gas temperature and CO concentration in the protection zone at the other side reduced significantly by an exponential trend with the increase of discharge velocity of the air curtain. These indicated that the air curtain can be an effective measure for confining the transportation of smoke and carbon monoxide species in long channel fires.