A Proposed Fire Safe Elevator System for Evacuation in Supertall Skyscraper

Full evacuation is a key concern for supertall buildings due to the high population density and long travel distance. Using the elevator would speed up evacuation, but there are fire safety concerns. A design of fire safe elevator system combining the refuge place with fire safe elevator is studied. In the proposed design, fire safe elevator is surrounded by the refuge places with at least 2 hours’ fire resistance rating. During the fire, the elevators would be controlled to stop only at the stories with refuge places. This arrangement can protect both the occupants and the elevators. Smoke spread to the system is studied by the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS). Different arrangements of smoke extraction with pressurization systems are evaluated by analyzing the smoke dispersion and pressure distributions in this fire safe elevator system.