Case Study: Hatch Mott MacDonald achieves improved underground safety and ventilation with ANSYS CFX

Hatch Mott MacDonald - Customer Case Study

MacDonald (Hatch Mott MacDonald), a leading North American consulting engineering firm specializing in subway ventilation, needed to predict fire and smoke movement in tunnels to ensure safe evacuation and acceptable conditions during normal operation. To model turbulent, buoyant, chemically reacting flows and assess tenability (visibility, temperature, toxicity), they used ANSYS CFX.

Using ANSYS CFX, MacDonald developed three-dimensional CFD models of ventilation, smoke and chemical behavior; validation against detailed fire experiments and field measurements confirmed the software’s predictive accuracy. ANSYS CFX enabled MacDonald to optimize ventilation and safety-system designs, improving safety and normal-operation conditions and giving clients confidence in innovative solutions.

MacDonald

Norman Rhodes

Vice-President