Shopping Mall, Switzerland

Pathfinder case study by Christian Kohler from Swissi.

This evacuation simulation was conducted as part of a security screening of an existing shopping mall in Switzerland. Defined evacuation routes were simulated with a set pre-movement time to analyze jam times and total evacuation times.

Advanced Visualization

To evaluate this project, Kohler imported FDS slice data from PyroSim into a Pathfinder project to show temperature data alongside occupant visualization and density contours.

"The goal was to conduct an ASET-RSET analysis as a coupled evacuation and smoke simulation. In Pathfinder, an evacuation simulation can be conducted and analysed simultaneously with a smoke analysis from Pyrosim. This overlap of both simulations gives you more insight than an FDS simulation alone."

Faster Results

To reduce the simulation time of this project, advanced parallel processing settings were used with the server configuration at Swissi to deliver faster results. "Parallel Cluster Processing is essential for our Company." The desired cell resolution and the model size would have proven a huge challenge without this capability.

• Number of cells: 60 million
• Cell resolution: 12.5 cm
• Number of occupants: 3305

Additionally, architects were able to provide 3D CAD models of the existing building. This allowed Kohler to import the structure's geometry in a fraction of the time it would have taken to recreate from scratch. "Import becomes more and more essential as architecture offices want the results as soon as possible."