The effect of sprinkler and smoke barrier facilities on fire evacuation in apartment buildings

Fire safety in high-rise residential buildings remains a critical challenge due to increasing urbanization and occupancy density. This study investigates the gap in quantifying synergistic interactions between sprinklers and smoke barriers, a topic underexplored in performance-based fire codes. Using an integrated framework combining Pyrosim and Pathfinder, this research models an apartment building under multiple fire scenarios, including corridor and adjacent room ignitions. Key parameters such as CO, visibility, and temperature are analysed to evaluate the effectiveness of standalone and combined fire protection measures. Results demonstrate that sprinklers alone extend the available safe egress time at Safety Exit 1 from 92 s to 154 s, while smoke barriers increased it to 115 s. The combined use of sprinklers and 60 cm smoke barriers with 5 m spacing achieves an available safe egress time of 420 s, effectively extends the time for personnel to escape. The combined utilization of firefighting facilities with strategic adjustment of smoke flow pathways under varied fire scenarios at different locations effectively prevents the hazard threshold from being reached throughout the 500-second simulation window. This study’s novelty lies in its parametric quantification of multi-measure synergies and practical guidelines for optimizing smoke barrier configurations. The findings directly inform revisions to fire codes and provide actionable strategies for designers and policymakers to enhance evacuation safety in high-rises. By bridging the gap between numerical modelling and real-world implementation, this research advances performance-based fire safety engineering, offering scalable solutions for global urban resilience. • Simulating fire emergency evacuation using Pathfinder and Pyrosim software in apartment buildings. • Analysing key parameters such as CO levels, temperature, and visibility. • The study shows that fire sprinklers are more effective than smoke barriers. • Combined use of sprinklers and barriers significantly improves evacuation safety compared to the individual use. • The optimal smoke barrier configuration is found to be a height of 60 cm with a 5m spacing in the case building.