Constructal design of evacuation from a three-dimensional living space

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2015-03-15

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© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. This paper demonstrates the fundamental relation that exists between the configuration of a three-dimensional living space and the time needed for the evacuation of all the inhabitants. The evacuation is treated as a physical flow system consisting of pedestrians who move from a volume to one or two exits. The living space has two variable aspect ratios, the floor shape and the profile shape (or the number of floors). First, the paper reports analytically the optimal floor and profile shapes for which the total evacuation time is minimum. Second, the analytical results are complemented and validated by numerical results obtained based on numerous simulations of pedestrian flow from volume to exits. The numerical results are further validated by performing the simulations of pedestrian movement with two different computational codes (Simulex and FDS + Evac). The fundamental relation presented in this paper can be used in the design of larger and more complex living spaces in modern urban settings.

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10.1016/j.physa.2014.12.005

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Lui, CH, NK Fong, S Lorente, A Bejan and WK Chow (2015). Constructal design of evacuation from a three-dimensional living space. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 422. pp. 47–57. 10.1016/j.physa.2014.12.005 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/15211.

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Bejan

Adrian Bejan

J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Professor Bejan was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal 2018 and the Humboldt Research Award 2019. His research covers engineering science and applied physics: thermodynamics, heat transfer, convection, design, and evolution in nature.

He is ranked among the top 0.01% of the most cited and impactful world scientists (and top 10 in Engineering world wide) in the 2019 citations impact database created by Stanford University’s John Ioannidis, in PLoS Biology.  He is the author of 30 books and 700 peer-referred articles. His h-index is 111 with 92,000 citations on Google Scholar. He received 18 honorary doctorates from universities in 11 countries.


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