Study on Fire Characteristics and Evacuation of the Haikousanlu Subway Station in Wuhan

To investigate the fire development and evacuation in the subway station, this paper establishes the simulation model of the fire and evacuation in the subway station through PyroSim and Pathfinder simulators. During the simulation, the smoke temperature, CO concentration and visibility of key positions are recorded over time. These parameters are finally utilized to calculate the available safe evacuation time (ASET) for each staircase and exit. Furthermore, a scheme for evacuating slow‐moving person is developed based on optimized path allocations. Simulation results obtain the following three conclusions. First, the thermal sensor near the fire source can break through the critical value of 60°C in 180 s, and the Exit 01 can be safely evacuated only within the first 500 s. Second, the critical evacuation time of the platform floor and the staircase entrance of the station hall floor are 300–450 s and 375–420 s, respectively. Third, the total evacuation time of the proposed scheme is 220 s, which is 20 s shorter than that of the baseline scheme; and the evacuation time of each exit and staircase is less than the ASET threshold.