Fire Safety Design, Means Of Egress And Fire Modelling With Sprinkler Actuation In A High Multifunctional Sports And Events Hall - Case Study

In early 2022, the European Men's Handball Championship were held in Hungary, and a brand-new sports hall was built in less than 3 years. The capacity of the seating area is around 20,000 people and will be used for other - non-sporting - events in various layouts.

Our presentation will outline the design process and the impact of changing needs on design. We will present the Hungarian regulation on the selection of relevant scenarios based on the national directive. Fire simulations and evacuation simulations were also carried out during the design of the building, and their results were examined together.

Due to the planned multifunctional use of the sports hall, 12 scenarios were drawn up for evacuation at the beginning of the design. 16 variants were checked again at the end of the construction. In contrast, the manager considered that testing 60-70 scenarios would cover all possible uses. All these evacuation variations, possibly considered in conjunction with the results of the 37 fire scenes, posed a significant professional and technical challenge.

Due to the layout of the building, the sports area and the surrounding circulation areas required a completely different approach in terms of both evacuation and smoke control. The circulation areas were relatively narrow in several places due to the shape of the building, which evolved in several rounds of testing. The number of staircases and their sizing was based on result of the simulations.

We also present the efficiency of the smoke and heat ventilation and the actuation of sprinklers in the large event hall and in the surrounding circulation areas. In the event hall different fire scenarios of the stage at theater type seating layout were examined. The focus was on the sprinkler actuation of the event hall with a high clearance between the floor and the ceiling. Question is whether the sprinklers installed on such a high ceiling would operate properly when there is a fire and how it can be modelled. Fire scenarios were developed and evaluated with three-dimensional fire source instead of more conventional localized fire source. Threshold fire sizes were determined for actuation of the ceiling sprinklers modelled with a 3-dimensional growing fire load. Special for the sprinkler skipping. Our model was validated with full scale fire tests from publications.