FDS+Evac Model Validation for Seated Row Arrangements: Aircraft and Cinema Theatre

Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) is open source computational fluid dynamics software for modeling practical fire problems. FDS includes a capability for the simulation of human egress process with and without the effects of fire, under the name of FDS+Evac. The human movement algorithm of FDS+Evac has been validated with experimental evacuation data and other evacuation models. But it is not yet validated on how to model evacuation process for seated row arrangements like aircraft, auditorium etc. Here an attempt has been made to model evacuation of humans in seated row arrangements with the help of two known experimental data, i.e., evacuation studies of a blended wing body aircraft (BWB) and a cinema theatre. The fire drill evacuation tests were modeled using FDS+Evac and validated with the experimental data and other human egress models. An appropriate set of FDS+Evac input parameters that seem to be well suited for the BWB case is presented in this paper. For the cinema theatre case the default parameter sets of FDS+Evac were seem to be appropriate.