Fire safety engineering for the International Centre for Life, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

This paper describes a study undertaken to determine the fire safety aspects for the International Centre for Life in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. Studies have been carried out to assess the consequences of fires in different areas of the building and to determine their impact on evacuation. Three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics models were developed to represent the complex geometry of the building. During the full analysis, several scenarios of possible fire locations were simulated, providing predictions of temperature and smoke movement. In parallel, an evacuation model was developed to predict the movement of people and studies were carried out on a range of scenarios to assess time-scales for overall evacuation. Using some of the results of one of the scenarios, this paper illustrates how such state-of-the-art computer simulations can be used to demonstrate that the requirements of the relevant safety regulations will be met.