Mercedes-Benz Museum - World's highest artificial Tornado

The 34.4-metre-high artificial tornado serves to eliminate smoke from the museum in the event of a fire.

The architecture of the Mercedes-Benz Museum placed particular demands on construction planners, architects and engineers with regard to smoke elimination. The provisions of the approving authority and fire protection regulations require all areas outside the fire level to be smoke-free in the event of smoke emission. However, due to the open-plan structure of the Mercedes-Benz Museum, the various exhibition areas are connected to each other without any fire zones via an interior courtyard and ramps. From the perspective of smoke elimination this presented a challenging task that could not be implemented through conventional fluid mechanics.

It was necessary to take a new approach, and so a globally unique smoke elimination system was developed especially for the Mercedes-Benz Museum. In the event of fire, 144 outlets located along the core walls inject air into the interior courtyard of the Mercedes-Benz Museum. This generates an artificial tornado, and the smoke collected is then discharged into the outside air via a smoke elimination ventilator located in the upper part of the building.

This procedure uses the principle of the tornado force, which has a devastating effect under natural conditions, to create a controlled life-saving form of fluid mechanics that opens up new architectural possibilities.