This document discusses smoke control and compliance checking. It notes that smoke control is often seen as mysterious due to perceived mathematical complexity, and many practitioners seldom encounter premises that require it. As a result, there are few experts in smoke control relative to the number of buildings with such systems. The document also states that smoke control submissions frequently demonstrate a lack of understanding, relying too heavily on unrealistic computational fluid dynamics modeling. It then provides examples of smoke control scenarios and an eleven step guide for checking compliance.

1. Smoke Control
Submissions
How do you check
compliance?

2. Introduction
Smoke control has been viewed by
many people in the fire safety
industry as something of a mystery.

3. Introduction
Many are put off by the imagined
mathematical complexity of the
subject

4. Introduction
Many others seldom come across
premises which require smoke
control provisions and so don’t feel
it necessary to invest their time in
learning about the subject.

5. Introduction
Result - few practitioners in the field
of smoke control relative to the
number of premises that have such
provisions installed in them.

6. Smoke Control Submissions

7. Smoke Control Submissions
It is surprisingly quite common that new
submissions from fire engineering
companies often show a lack of
understanding of smoke control.

8. Smoke Control Submissions
They often place heavy reliance on
computational fluid dynamic analysis
which is often based on assumptions
that are not realistic

11. ASET - 3 minutes
RSET - 3.5 minutes

12. CFD Modelling

13. Smoke Control

14. Smoke Control
• We have known for years since
fire was discovered that if you put
a fire in a room you need to have a
hole to let the smoke out.

15. Smoke Control
• We need to know how big the
hole has to be?

16. Function of Smoke Control

17. Function of Smoke Control
• Almost invariably smoke control in
buildings is used to compensate,
either directly or indirectly, for a lack
of passive compartmentation.

18. Function of Smoke Control
• Compartmentation, in a building,
controls the spread of fire and
smoke by putting physical barriers
around the fire.

19. Function of Smoke Control
• Smoke control controls the spread
of smoke in the building restricting
it to certain acceptable areas

20. Function of Smoke Control
• Control of the spread of fire is dealt
with by either
- sprinkler installation or
- by controlling the size and
locations of the fuel beds.

21. Essential Features of Smoke System

22. 1. There must be some means
of forming a smoke
reservoir
2. Means of extracting –
natural or mechanical
3. Replacement air

25. Example 1
A large factory development has
agreed a worst case fire scenario
where, in order to maintain means of
escape from a mezzanine, the height
of rise of smoke to the base of the
established smoke layer, z, will be
24m.

26. Base of
smoke layer
3.5m
24m
Building 110m x 70m

27. The heat release rate is 625 kw.m-2
The fire size is 3m x 3m and the
convective heat portion is 0.8

28. Example 2
A plan has been submitted to convert
two adjacent shop units into a single
shop unit. The width of the proposed
shop front will be 14m wide and
2.2m high. The shop is fitted with
fast response sprinklers

30. The small reservoir will be 14m wide and
5.6m from the shop front downstand to
the containment screen at the edge of
the underside of the balcony.
They have proposed to have 4 ventilators
rated at 10m3.sec with a throat diameter
of 0.9. The inlet air is provided by doors
and automatic opening vents with an
area of 11m2

32. Eleven Step Guide