Accurate 3-D Sprinkler System Designing with Multiple Views for Design Engineers

Many post-fire investigations have revealed the failure of a fire extinguishing system in reducing deaths, injury and damage to property. A building may have a sprinkler system which is not appropriate for its hazard level, water may shut off or there could be an obstruction to the sprinkler system.

Engineers require a sprinkler system design software for live calculations in order to determine the effectiveness of the whole system. The software can automate free, loop, standpipe, and grid system drawings for simulation of a real-world fire suppression system. A simulation by a trusted sprinkler system design program will show you the fluid flow statics and help in analysing the hydraulics in an automated fire sprinkler system.

A fire sprinkler system design software can help in solving a variety of challenges that usually consumes a lot of time if done manually. The program will save time and effort, and provide you the most accurate calculations for:

• Sprinkler heads layouts
• Architectural layout
• Piping layout
• Hydraulic preparation, and 
• Fabrication listing.

Below are two of the most popular sprinkler system design software used by the HVAC professionals in Australia, New Zealand, Americas, Asia, and other regions of the world. Let’s have a look at their key features and benefits.

HYENA

HYENA computer program is designed to help users with a hydraulic analysis of fire sprinklers and hydrant systems used in various commercial buildings and large residential projects. The program works well for simple, side or centre-led configurations, and also for complicated and combined systems consisting of hose reel systems and other systems that allow for the representation of discharge as k-factor and minimum flow. 

Main features of HYENA computer program: 

• The program is capable of analysing looped and gridded systems, and also the conventional tree configurations.
•  It can carry sprinkler system analysis in accordance with NFPA, NZ4541, AS2118 and SSPC52.
• Supports up to 10 input points that can be modelled as a town mains water supply, fixed pressure or pump.
• When pipe sizes are entered as nominal sizes, the program will determine the actual ID for different pipe materials.
• It supports a wide range of fittings with equivalent lengths stored in the program.
• Booster pumps can be located anywhere in the network.
• Provisions are made for griddled layout for easy input that can contain up to three main pipes with range pipes in between.
• Sprinkler elevations can be fixed at a given height in a grid and entered individually across a grid row, as a single slope or pitched slope across the grid row.

SPRINK

SPRINK is a specialized computer program for hydraulic analysis for fire sprinkler and hydraulic hydrant systems used in small buildings. The program is designed for use by HVAC professionals in North America to analyse automatic fire sprinkler systems with a simple or complicated looped and gridded system. The program can also be used to analyse the hydrant and hose reel installations or combined sprinkler, hydrant and/or hose reel systems

The program allows you up to 10 input points that can be modelled as a fixed pressure, a town mains water supply or a pump. It can operate under WINDOWS on a wide range of units including Metric, British and US. The nodes not nominated as discharges are automatically assigned as reference nodes to save input.

The program can be used to determine the design point given the k-factor and minimum discharge of each sprinkler head or hose reel. It provides a graphical display of the grid that one can use to display pipe numbers, pipe diameters, node diameters, and node numbers.  The grid commands can be converted into the longhand detailed individual pipe and sprinkler specification. The program uses a process of matrix inversion to solve the differential equations for each loop in the system. 

Choosing the right software is important

It is important to have a sprinkler system that can deliver the right amount of water to extinguish a fire in a design area. The computer programs mentioned above can help design engineers to calculate this amount, taking into consideration initial water pressure, pipe friction, momentum changes in elevation, and other important factors.

ACADS-BSG is a leading building services software packages provider with clients in Australia, New Zealand, Americas, Asia and other parts of the world. These are some of the few key features and benefits of these two highly useful and popular sprinkler system design software for building service and HVAC professionals. Comprehensive help is available at each screen so that you can use the software with ease.

Designing in a 3-D environment

The sprinkler systems can be designed in 3-D space with proper elevation. The programs allow for an accurate 3-D design environment to manage coordination in your design. Users can create multiple sheets and tables with multiple views.

You can also take a print out of the clean design output of these programs, and also easily share the softcopy with your clients.

The company also provides many more useful software with specific functionalities such as Koala, Donkey, Camel, etc. for the benefit of building service industry professionals.