High Speed Rail Stations

This project covers the safety validation for a major railway network connecting the Greater Cairo area (6th of October & Giza) to key destinations along the North Coast (Alamein, Borg El Arab, and Rass Elhekma). The scope involves advanced safety analysis for a wide range of station facilities, including massive arrival and departure halls, multi-story atriums, public food courts, and extensive car parking areas. The goal is to ensure that every station, regardless of its size or layout, meets the strict requirements of the Civil Defense authorities.

The main challenge was the extreme variety of architectural spaces we had to analyze. Smoke behaves very differently in a 28-meter high atrium compared to a low-ceilinged corridor or a massive 22,000 m² car park. In the high atriums (like in 6th of October Station), the risk is that smoke might cool down and drop back onto passengers before being extracted. In the car parks, the challenge is visibility. Standard calculations were not enough to prove safety to the Civil Defense; we needed to visualize exactly where the smoke would go in every specific scenario.

We utilized Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to simulate “virtual fires” in the most critical areas of the stations. This allowed us to test the smoke control systems before they were finalized. For the high atriums, we verified that the roof fans were powerful enough to keep the smoke layer high above the evacuation paths. For the car parks and corridors, we proved that the ventilation would keep escape routes clear for passengers. This flexible analysis allowed the client to select specific high-risk zones for simulation, ensuring full compliance without over-spending on unnecessary tests.