Fire safety assessment of semi-open car parks

Guidelines for the safe design of semi-open car parks require a minimum amount of open façade in order to ensure an effective removal of heat and smoke during a car fire. In this study the fire safety level is assessed by the use of validated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations of different design variants. The fire safety is assessed using temperature and sight length criteria for safe deployment of the fire department. Results show that 3 out of 7 studied variants did not meet these criteria. It is therefore concluded that it is possible to design semi-open car parks which comply with current Dutch guidelines, yet when assessed with criteria for safe deployment of the fire brigade have an insufficient fire safety level.