Numerical investigation of the fatal 1985 Manchester Airport B737 fire

Galea, Edwin R.; Wang, Zhaozhi; Jia, Fuchen

doi:10.1017/aer.2016.122

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…To sum up, it can be said that the highest possible survival rate for passengers and crew in air accidents is due to constantly improving regulations in the area of airworthiness and operational requirements, improving aircraft design in the area of emergency evacuation systems and their technical reliability, and due to constantly improving procedures and training for flight crew and on-board personnel. How important it is for the smooth implementation of evacuation procedures can be confirmed by the "Fire Safety Engineering Group" (FSEG) at the Univeristy of Greenwich, published in January 2017, which concerns an analysis of the Manchester accident of August 22, 1985, by Boeing 737-200 operated by British Airtours [16]. The analysis of the accident and the simulations carried out showed that: one minute's delay in opening the aircraft's front escape door resulted in the death of 48 passengers, while a 30-second delay in opening the escape door to the aircraft wing resulted in the death of 20 passengers.…”

Section: Wybrane Zagadnienia Ewakuacji Samolotów Pasażerskichmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The analysis of the accident and the simulations carried out showed that: one minute's delay in opening the aircraft's front escape door resulted in the death of 48 passengers, while a 30-second delay in opening the escape door to the aircraft wing resulted in the death of 20 passengers. If all emergency exits had been opened at the time set in the certification tests, all passengers and crew would have been effectively evacuated [16].…”

Section: Wybrane Zagadnienia Ewakuacji Samolotów Pasażerskichmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Testing the Process of Evacuation from the Passenger Aircraft with the Use of Computer Simulation

Jasztal¹

2020

SFT

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Aim: The main aim of the study was to investigate the possibility to use the Pathfinder simulation software to determine the duration of an evacuation and to plan its course for various scenarios of evacuation organisation, for specific profiles and behaviours of passengers and on-board personnel, and for a specific geometrical arrangement of the passenger cabin of a selected passenger aircraft. In addition, the paper discusses selected factors that affect the evacuation from the passenger aircraft. Project and methods: The Pathfinder software used in the research has the graphical interface to create an evacuation simulation model (2D and 3D) as well as tools to visualise the results. Pathfinder is based on artificial intelligence algorithms, in which each passenger has a number of individual features that can influence his/her movements and decisions during the simulation. The simulation of people's movement is determined by their profiles and behaviours, the parameters of which can be entered by means of probability distributions, which makes it possible to take into account the stochastic nature of the evacuation process. Results: The Boeing 787 Dreamliner was selected for the study, for which six options for simulating the evacuation of 252 passengers and eight members of on-board personnel were conducted. The shortest evacuation time was achieved by changing the even distribution of the number of passengers to the individual emergency exits, thus avoiding congestions in sensitive areas of the passenger cabin. The increase in passengers' maximum speed has paradoxically increased evacuation times, as it has increased the intensity of passenger collisions. It was found that one of the key issues affecting the timing of an evacuation is the proper organisation of the evacuation by on-board personnel, who, by guiding passengers through the geometrically most advantageous passageways, results in the fastest possible evacuation. The simulations in variants five and six have achieved satisfactory evacuation times, which are within the emergency aircraft evacuation time limit required in a certification process. Conclusions: The presented simulation models, the results obtained, and the wide range of possibilities of three-dimensional visualisation of research results give a rational basis for the use of Pathfinder software for testing the evacuation process and thus: for the usage in the aircraft design process, for preparing aircrafts for tests, for shaping evacuation procedures, for on-board personnel training and for air accident investigation.

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Section: Wybrane Zagadnienia Ewakuacji Samolotów Pasażerskichmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Wybrane Zagadnienia Ewakuacji Samolotów Pasażerskichmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing the Process of Evacuation from the Passenger Aircraft with the Use of Computer Simulation

Jasztal¹

2020

SFT

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“…(4) A seek curve is generated to define his desired motion. (5) The occupant attempts to move along the tangent to his current seek curve.…”

Section: Path Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On February 5, 2015, a fire accident happened in Yiwu Mall in Huidong County, Guangdong Province of China, which resulted in 17 people dying in the cinema on the fourth floor. Some more accidents can be found in Prager et al 4 and Galea et al 5 When accidents happen, improving the pedestrian flow rates at those bottlenecks on the evacuation routes to make sure most of the occupants can be evacuated in time can decrease the losses of life and property obviously, and this issue attracted lots of attention during the past several decades. For example, by doing some simulations by computer, Helbing et al 6 demonstrated the escape rate of crowds under panic conditions is enhanced if an obstacle is asymmetrically placed on the upstream side of an narrow exit.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influences of wing gate turnstiles’ characteristics on pedestrian evacuation based on agent-based egress model

et al. 2021

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Wing gate turnstiles are widely used in airports, subway stations, railway stations, movie theaters, parks, etc., and influence the pedestrian evacuation greatly while accidents happen. Thus, doing some researches on how to improve the evacuation speed for wing gate turnstiles are meaningful and necessary. In response to this issue, the influences of the wing gate turnstiles on pedestrian evacuation are investigated by pathfinder in this paper. Pathfinder is an agent-based egress simulator that uses steering behaviors to model occupant motion. First of all, by Pathfinder, two evacuation models with flat-shaped and wedge-shaped hosts wing gate turnstiles, respectively, are established, and the simulations of pedestrian evacuation are carried out by computer. The results show the evacuation speed obtained by the wedge-shaped host is faster than that obtained by the flat-shaped host. Moreover, the longest evacuation time is obtained when the channels’ width is 90 cm, and the shortest is obtained when the channels’ width is 51.4 cm. For a small number of evacuees, the evacuation time is mainly influenced by the original distributions of the evacuees, however, as the number of the evacuees increases, the evacuation time is mainly influenced by the number of the evacuees. Furthermore, the wing gate turnstiles with widened hosts can get less evacuation time no matter whether the hosts are flat-shaped or wedge-shaped, however, the evacuation-time-saved rate obtained by wedge-shaped host is much higher than that obtained by flat-shaped host. Then, the influences of the wedge angle on the pedestrian evacuation are discussed, and the optimal wedge angle is obtained. The obtained results can not only provide helps for managers to evacuate crowds under emergency, but also offer some assistances for designers to design those gate turnstiles or building exits.

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“…This does not necessarily reduce the thermal degradation of materials within the compartment, as the hot gas mixture present has enough energy to allow the endothermic pyrolysis to continue. An investigation into the 1985 British Airtours fight 28M using modern Computational Fluid Dyanmics (CFD)-based analysis concluded that a delay of 50 s in fire propagation could have saved all 55 lives lost in the disaster [16]. This further emphasises the destructive nature of fire within a compartment when considering that the ignition position was outside of the cabin, and local to the engine.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Investigations on the Propagation of Fire in a Railway Carriage

Craig¹,

Asim²

2020

Energies

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In this study, advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)-based numerical simulations have been performed in order to analyse fire propagation in a standard railway compartment. A Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) has been employed to mimic real world scenarios associated with fire propagation within railway carriages in order to develop safety guidelines for railway passengers. Comprehensive parametric investigations on the effects of ignition location, intensity and cabin upholstery have been carried out. It has been observed that a fire occurring near the exits of the carriage results in a lower smoke layer height, due to the local carriage geometry, than an identical fire igniting at the center of the carriage. This in turn causes the smoke density along the aisleway to vary by around 30%. Reducing the ignition energy by half has been found to restrict combustion, thus reducing smoke density and carbon exhaust gases, reducing the average temperature from 170 °C to 110 °C. Changing the material lining of the seating has been found to cause the most significant change in output parameters, despite its relative insignificance in bulk mass. A polyester sample produces a peak carbon monoxide concentration of 7500 ppm, which is 27× greater compared with nylon. This difference has been found to be due to the fire spread and propagation between fuels, signifying the polyester’s unsuitability for use in railway carriages.

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Numerical investigation of the fatal 1985 Manchester Airport B737 fire

Cited by 9 publications

References 26 publications

Testing the Process of Evacuation from the Passenger Aircraft with the Use of Computer Simulation

Testing the Process of Evacuation from the Passenger Aircraft with the Use of Computer Simulation

Influences of wing gate turnstiles’ characteristics on pedestrian evacuation based on agent-based egress model

Numerical Investigations on the Propagation of Fire in a Railway Carriage

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