CFD analysis of atrium smoke control at the Newseum

This paper describes the CFD analysis of the atrium smoke control system at the Newseum. The Newseum is a museum dedicated to news, and its new building will become a major attraction in Washington, DC. The building code allows an atrium to be open to the rest of the building only at three levels. The architectural concept of the Newseum is that six levels of the atrium plus the basement are open to the rest of the Newseum space. The CFD analysis showed that this architectural concept provides at least equivalent protection to a base case with only three levels open. The CFD model used for these simulations is the Fire Dynamics Simulator (TDS) model developed at US National Institute of Standards and Technology. Simulations were made for six different fire locations for both the proposed case and the base case.