By order of the Staatliches Bauamt München II (public building authority) and the CAD-Department Bavaria, accu:rate evaluated the persisting geometry of a lecture room by simulating several scenarios and compared it to a reconstruction variation.
The lecture room of the clinical center Großhadern offers seats for 162 students, who - in case of a fire alarm - have to leave the room as quickly as possible through two exits.
Defining the scenarios
Three evacuation scenarios of the fully occupied lecture room were simulated:
- The evacuation through the left exit, if the right exit is blocked
- The evacuation through both exits
- The evacuation through the right exit, if the left exit is blocked
In the following figures, the walking distances of the persons and the distribution of the velocities in the lecture hall are shown.
To decide about the reconstruction that shall guarantee a faster and safer evacuation in case of an emergency, a variation according to the current requirements of the building law was simulated as well as the scenarios with the persisting geometry.
Results
In the scenarios 1 and 3 the evacuation in the variation according to the building law was faster than the results of the persisting geometry. In the scenario 2, where both exits were used, the evacuation of the persisting geometry was a little bit faster.
The simulation results helped the public building authority to come to a decision regarding the replacement.
Image source: accu:rate.