

Due to type, size and configuration, Amazon building construction does not fit into ‘standard’ regulatory criteria and requires a custom Fire Strategy to be prepared for each building in each geography requiring a consistent replicable process/architecture with fastest possible simulation complete time combined with lowest possible cost. Overview of solutionĪ cloud CFD solution was required to provide an efficient adaptation of the previous process running on on-premises HPC, optimizing model criteria and providing efficient interfaces with fire simulation CFD applications such as FDS, Pyrosim and ANSYS Fluent that are used by internal and external consultants.

Thanks to this approach, each individual project can meet strict governance of design requirements. It allows internal and external consultants to remain in control of the overall process with zero intervention from Amazon.

The deployed system provides a simple and consistent replicable process for multiple CFD applications, such as FDS, Pyrosim and Ansys Fluent. This is a real world application based on a previous blog, and a step-by-step workshop, that we recommend you reference after reading this post. In this blog post, we discuss the architecture deployed by Amazon on AWS to conduct large-scale CFD fire simulations of Amazon construction projects as part of their Fire Strategy solutions to demonstrate both Associate Life Safety and of the Fire Service arriving to site. By leveraging AWS for CFD simulations, Amazon shortened the runtimes of these models to less than 1 day. Previously, alterations to building configurations created delays of up to 14-21 days. CFD is used for fire strategy approvals for all core buildings, and minimizing the time to run CFD change variations to meet permit time lines is critical to meeting business milestones. In recent work, Amazon EU Design and Construction (Amazon) utilized AWS to facilitate additional project oversight and faster CFD modeling for Amazon construction projects. Figure 1 – Example of an FDS fire scenario rendered by Smokeview
