Investigation of atrium smoke exhaust effectiveness.

This paper presents results of a project initiated by ASHRAE and the National Research Council of Canada. The project applies both physical and numerical modeling techniques to atrium smoke exhaust systems to investigate the effectiveness of such systems and to develop guidelines for their design. This paper compares experimental results obtained from testing a physical model of a mechanically exhausted atrium space with results of two sets of numerical predictions of the same space. One set of numerical predictions uses standard plume equations; the other set uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This paper also investigate the effect of fire size and opening location on the conditions in the atrium.