The health and safety system of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens was studied by SIMTEC, to evaluate the effectiveness of its standard and emergency HVAC systems. The building is a former industrial brewery and many of its art exhibits, were created with flammable materials. The basement, ground and second floor constitute the three major exhibition rooms and were modeled along with the lobby, the restaurant, the museum shop and the escalators. The network of fire sprinklers was modeled at their exact locations on the ceiling and the walls. The risk associated with their failure was estimated, considering three cases of sprinkler water capacity: (a) nominal, (b) partial and (c) empty.
SIMTEC created a CFD model that resolved the unsteady buoyant heat transfer, including hot gases as CO and CO2. The evacuation plans and the smoke-extraction ventilation system determined the corresponding inflow and outflow boundary conditions for the building rooms. The first 15 minutes after the fire outburst were simulated, an adequate time for the building evacuation. The visibility, the total cumulative dose for heat stroke and the CO lethality, were assessed for the available time for the whole Museum. The studied metrics showed the effectiveness of the emergency system.
ANSYS tools: ANSYS FLUENT
Customer: 
