Using IFC to Support Enclosure Fire Dynamics Simulation

摘要

One objective of the performance-based design (PBD) of fire safety in buildings is to ensure occupants have an adequate time to escape the effects of the fire unharmed. A commonly accepted threshold of the safe evacuation time is the time it takes for the fire to compromise the escape routes rendering them untenable. This is a complex computational problem that often requires simulations to solve given the geometry of the building, plausible fire scenarios, thermo-physical properties of building materials and furnishing, as well as the environmental conditions. Conventionally, the input data preparation for such simulations is time consuming and error-prone as it involves tedious manual measurement and data transcription from paper-based drawings and specification documents. The recent uptake of ISO-based building information modelling (BIM) among building designers means that such information should become more readily available. However, sharing information from such a highly complex data model as BIM with downstream applications such as fire dynamics simulations can be challenging due to the lack of a practical method for querying spatial data. This paper explores two methods of sharing BIM information with an industry standard enclosure fire dynamics simulation tool. The paper further describes potential future work in using the simulation output to help auditing a given scenario against a set of compliance criteria. A four-storey sample building model is presented in the paper to illustrate both approaches.