
CBI member, Arup has reported that it was appointed as the fire engineering consultant by the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design for the new Daxing Airport.
With a surface area of over 700,000m2, Beijing Daxing Airport is set to be the world’s largest, by measure of physical footprint. Furthermore, it will have an anticipated maximum capacity of 100 million passengers a year, making it one of the world’s most heavily used airports.
Furthermore, the new airport has been designed to be a super transportation hub for Beijing – beneath the terminal building there will be three underground railway stations with a total area of 200,000m2 for five railway lines to allow easy transfer for passengers to various means of transportation.
While the flowing, interconnected form of the terminal building creates a stunning piece of architecture, it also presents significant design challenges - as the entire building presents itself as a single vast fire compartment. This is further complicated by the transportation hub underneath, which is seamlessly linked to the airport upstairs.
Arup’s fire engineers took a performance-based design approach and adopted a series of fire protection strategies, including the installation of smoke curtains; as well as fire shutters and fire separation bands, to prevent the spread for fire and smoke from one control zone to another, replacing traditional solid walls that affect passenger circulation. Areas that Arup engineers identified as high-risk areas were fully contained by utilising fire resistant construction techniques.
Arup was also responsible for developing the airport’s evacuation strategy in the case of fire, where the terminal’s vast size and the large number of occupants once again presented a major design challenge.
The escape distance to outside is over 200m for most parts within the Central Zone of the airport. Arup needed to reduce this distance to within 75 metres. The solution, to install 29 emergency stairwells that would not only shorten the distance between the various floors of the terminal, but also divert passenger flow to prevent bottlenecks. However, Arup went one step further, and also devised a ‘smart evacuation plan’ that responds by providing a different egress route in response to the fire's live location.
To read more about Arup’s involvement in the Daxing Airport project, please follow the link.
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