As part of the EU FP6 project NACRE, FSEG investigated the evacuation capability of Blended Wing Body (BWB) Aircraft configuration. In this simulation we have coupled the SMARTFIRE simulation of an external fire to the airEXODUS simulation of the aircraft evacuation. In this simulation, with 1020 paxs and 25 cabin crew we find that there are some 12 fatalities and 25 serious injuries are likely. The survivors evacuate within 89.3 sec.
The fatalities all occur around the point of burn through. However, unlike a conventional tube aircraft, flashover is not the main driver to survivabilty, the spread of smoke and toxic products limits survivability.
A paper describing this work was published in the Royal Aeronautical Journal and won the 2011 bronze award for best paper to appear in the RAeJ. The paper is: Fire and evacuation analysis in BWB aircraft configurations: computer simulations and large-scale evacuation experiment. Galea, Edwin R., Filippidis, Lazaros, Wang, Zhaozhi and Ewer, John, Aeronautical Journal , 114 (1154). pp. 271-277, 2010.
