Fire Ventilation in platform screen doors equipped Metro Station

Scope of this work is to analyze a way to investigate an admissible solution for fire ventilation systems installed in a metro station equipped with Platform Screen Doors (PSD). Fire ventilation is related to fire scenarios involving generic events on the rolling stock present in the station. In order to evaluate capability and efficiency of desmoking systems, computational fluid dynamics analysis (CFD) have been developed, using Fire Dynamics Simulator software (FDS). Analysis have involved a wide range of fire simulations in a typical model of station where different system configurations provided during the design stage are applied. In all these models the railway platform area is delimited from the truck area by means of PSD system and all the limits with platform and concourse zone are modeled to investigate smoke interactions with station areas. System configurations assumed during the design provide for the possibility to operate a ventilation from the train side using side and upper ventilation as well as platform level ventilation. Simulation results show differences between smoke behavior using different systems and strategy leading us to the final design choice. According to NFPA 130 Standard, the acceptability of the solutions was defined applying tenability criteria along emergency and evacuation pathways. Final ventilation strategies using under platform ventilation have obtained excellent results in term of smoke and compliance of tenability criteria.