Our Approach
Performance-based engineering for ventilation and fire safety
Notre Métier
Performance research
A performance-based approach, upstream of the project
FluidAlp is an engineering firm specialised in aeraulics — more specifically ventilation, thermal engineering and fire safety.
Fire-safety engineering often relies on a posteriori project analysis: assessing compliance against reference performance levels and regulations. The scope of adjustments it enables is limited, since the project is already finalised and its evolution potential exhausted.
The approach developed by FluidAlp positions itself upstream — from feasibility and design phases. It consists of defining realistic and precise performance targets, then designing the systems needed to reach them and optimising their implementation. This approach adapts to each structure's specificities, whether new projects or interventions on existing assets to preserve and bring up to today's requirements.
This approach naturally integrates the regulatory and normative framework, which remains fundamental. However, we analyse and put it in perspective in order to translate it into coherent solutions adapted to real operating conditions — with global performance in mind.
Performance is understood as a search for technical and economic efficiency — reaching the defined targets with a controlled investment level, in terms of both equipment and installed power. Performance is evaluated at each project stage, in an iterative optimisation loop.
This approach relies on integrated knowledge of physical phenomena, fed by field experience and laboratory research. It guarantees realistic, robust performance adapted to operating conditions.
FluidAlp supports its clients throughout the project — from the earliest studies to system commissioning. This continuity ensures consistency between initial objectives, technical choices and operational implementation.
The approach covers all design, study and execution phases. It extends through testing, measurement and adjustment phases — refining settings and optimising system operation, notably in ventilation scenarios and, where relevant, regulation strategies.
This end-to-end involvement ensures that the delivered systems actually meet the performance levels defined upstream, adapted to real operating conditions.
Notre Métier
The method
Mastering aeraulic contexts, rooted in research
FluidAlp's work is based on the performance-based approach described above, focused on mastering aeraulic contexts — the organisation and behaviour of flows within a structure. These contexts directly condition the performance sought, whether for pollution control or smoke behaviour in fire situations.
This approach relies on a fine understanding of physical phenomena — convection, diffusion, gravity-driven flows — governing mass and energy transfers. It is built on extensive experience feedback from many ventilation and fire tests, and on laboratory research conducted in close partnership with Aix-Marseille University (Department of Mechanics).
FluidAlp has thus developed recognised expertise in controlling smoke movement in confined spaces. Understanding gravity-driven flows is a key point, enabling us to design and size ventilation systems adapted to real phenomena and to optimise smoke-extraction strategies.
This competence, initially developed in tunnels, has been extended to other types of structures and environments. Depending on the configuration, it can lead to systems integrating regulated ventilation control — adjusted to the fire's location and to the expected performance.
These systems enable longitudinal smoke confinement, preserve stratification or ensure controlled sweeping — in a balance that avoids the undesirable effects of over-ventilation (mixing the smoke and feeding the fire).
This approach also applies to other domains, notably sanitary ventilation and thermal engineering — always with the goal of efficiency at a controlled investment level.
The solutions developed are tested and validated during on-site tests before commissioning, ensuring their adequacy to real conditions and safety requirements — notably for people and emergency services.
Areas of application include road and rail tunnels, complex underground networks (metros, rail lines with stations, tramways), public buildings and industrial facilities.
By extension, this expertise is also mobilised in external aeraulics — notably for building wind exposure studies and the optimisation of natural or mechanical ventilation devices.
Mastering aeraulic contexts finally relies on fine expertise in mechanical ventilation systems — fans and jet fans — and their implementation. FluidAlp maintains close technical relationships with equipment manufacturers to optimise integration and performance.
Optimisations may extend to environmental integration studies, particularly on the acoustic side. FluidAlp has been working for several years in close collaboration with Unisson, an engineering firm specialised in acoustic engineering.
Partenaire acoustique : Unisson — acoustic engineering
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