Smoke management systems in modern atria, which are often complex and irregular, can be designed by the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models. In recent years, CFD has become very popular thanks to easy access to high-performance computers and the availability of CFD programs. This paper presents some fundamental concepts used in CFD models, and describes their limitations and impacts on model predictions. Basic model techniques are reexamined which include multi meshes, grid stretching techniques, cell aspect ratio, passive boundaries and thermal boundary conditions. The impact of these parameters on the results is investigated by considering simple atrium fire simulations conducted using the NIST’s Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS).

Units: SI