Modeling the emergency evacuation of the high rise building based on the control volume model

Safety evacuation is one of the major requirements in evaluating the fire safety performance and design of the high rise buildings. The main aim of this study is to simulate the dynamics of the evacuees and derive the evacuation times of the high rise building by using the control volume model. The control volume model assumes that each individual is an independent particle and a virtual closed surface that can be formed by connecting the waiting persons at exit. This model had been successfully used to simulate the dynamic change of the evacuation occupants of the mass rapid transit station. In this study, the evacuation simulation process is divided into five stages and based on the assumptions of homogeneous flow with merge flow ratio where the exit flows from different floors meet and merge together. Seven scenarios are analyzed by using the various values of the parameters which influenced the evacuation process in the high rise building including walking speed, coefficient of flow rate and merge flow ratio. The simulation results are found to be in good agreement with the results of NFPA method. Furthermore, the dynamic characteristics of the evacuation process at each time-step for each of the floors are presented and discussed.