An experimental study for the flow rates of automatic pressure smoke dampers and their applications

Smoke spread from a fire is a major cause of mass casualties. To suppress smoke spread, escape routes are pressurized and smoke dampers are used. In Korea, the automatic pressure smoke damper (APSD) was recently adopted in escape routes, and the number of APSDs is increasing concomitantly with the increase in the number of high-rise buildings. In this study, a more efficient method for the assessment of the flow rates of APSD was experimentally studied for multi-blade types of which the blade angle is controlled. A modified wind tunnel was used to measure the relationship between the pressure difference and the flow rate with a blade angle variation for three kinds of APSD. As a result, the performance of the APSDs could be presented as a function of the pressure difference and blade angle. Using this performance function, a volume of information regarding the characteristics of the APSDs could be easily extracted. Furthermore, some experimental methods, based on the performance of the APSD, were suggested to assess the smoke suppression velocity and the effective leakage area in practical buildings.