Abstract

 

With the increase in the population density of cities, the value of the residential lands grew gradually. As a result, the construction of high-rise buildings attracted attention, considering their large number of floors and capability to contain larger populations in a limited piece of land. However, establishing a large population in a specific place requires particular safety and security measures and a predetermined plan for emergency cases that could optimize evacuation time in the whole building and make the financial damage as low as possible. Thanks to advances in technology, buildings can be simulated for an emergency situation; their potential hazards can be anticipated, and solutions can be provided.
Therefore, the main questions are raised:
Where are the best places to assign elevators and vertical transportation systems in a high-rise building?
What are the best scenarios, capacity, and acceleration for minimizing evacuation time in a high-rise building?
Through the use of Thunderhead Engineering's Pathfinder software, which is an emergency egress simulator, we simulate and examine the role of elevators in the evacuation process.
In this research, the plans of famous buildings with similar heights, number of elevators, number of staircases, the ratio of the core's area to the plan's surface, etc., were investigated. Consequently, a plan was considered as the reference plan. Different evacuation scenarios were then analyzed using the Thunderhead Pathfinder simulation software, and the most optimal situation was analyzed again in case of varying capacity and acceleration, which led us to suggest the optimized location, size, and acceleration with different evacuation scenarios for the emergency situations

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Keywords: High-Rise Building, Emergency Situation, Elevators, Staircase, Thunderhead Pathfinder