• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.107-116
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• 2017

Fires in tunnels are an international concern and fatal accidental fires in tunnels seem to occur on annual. They have the potential to become much worse int the future as more and longer tunnels are constructed and as traffic densities increase. This is a serious problem. The main purpose of this study is to develop operational procedures for fire brigades in road tunnel fires. This study discussed the past to see what can be learned from the incidents that have already done in tunnels. 73 cases of road tunnel fires domestic and outside of Korea were investigated and classified into 4 incident categories. Among them, 4 tunnel fires are highlighted, focusing on the activities of fire brigades and operation. Regarding the establishment of the strategies for fire fighting, 6 kinds of fire scenario curves have been deducted with regard to the relation between intervention time and heat release rate. It made the choice from the defensive or aggressive fire fighting activities depending on two criteria i.e. response limit and maximum response time. Road Tunnel Classification models can be useful when a fire brigade evaluates fire risk levels in the tunnels under its jurisdiction from the firefighting point of view and sets up preventive measures.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.1319-1324
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• 2007

Many researches have been performed to analyze the smoke movement in tunnel fires by using field model. Recently, FDS(Fire Dynamics Simulator) v.4, which is one of the field model and developed from NIST(National Institute of Standards and Technology), is widely used. In tunnel fires, FDS can show detail results in local point, but it has difficulties in boundary condition and taking long computing time as the number of grid increases. So, there is a need to use alternative method for tunnel fire simulation. A zone model is different kind of CFD method and solves ordinary differential equation based on conservation and auxiliary equations. It shows good macroscopic view in less computing time compared to field model. In this study, therefore, to confirm the applicability of CFAST in tunnel fire analysis, numerical simulations using CFAST are conducted to analyze smoke movement in longitudinal ventilation reduced-scale tunnel fires. Then the results are compared with experimental results. The differences of temperature and critical velocity between numerical results and experimental data are over $30^{\circ}C$ and 0.9m/s, respectively. These values are out of error range. It shows that CFAST 6.0 is hard to be used for tunnel fire simulation.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.1218-1222
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• 2007

Under various tunnel fires, smoke average temperature and volume flow rate in a tunnel fire are calculated. To obtain realistic results, enthalpy of smoke which composites combustion gases and entrainment air is calculated from curvefit polynomials by temperature.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.691-698
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• 2002

In this study, reduced-scale experiments were conducted to analyze smoke movement in tunnel fires according to vepntilation method. The 1/20 scale experiments were carried out under the Froude scaling using gasoline pool fires ranging from 6.6 to 10 cm in diameter corresponding to total heat release rate from 0.714 to 2.5 kW. Temperatures near the ceiling were lowered by installing the vent, and much lowered by operating fan compared wiht tile case without vent. In case of forced ventilation, the exhaust fan was more effective than the intake fan. Vertical temperatures at the upper part of the tunnel were also lowered by installing the vent. But, when suction fan was operated, temperatures at the lower part of the tunnel were higher than that without vent.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.115-120
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• 2003

In this study, smoke movement in tunnel fires was investigated with various aspect ratio(0.5, 0.667, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0) of tunnel cross section. Reduced-scale experiments were carried out under the Froude scaling using 8.27 kW ethanol pool fire. Temperatures were measured under the ceiling and vertical direction along the center of the tunnel. Smoke front velocity and temperature decrease rate were reduced as higher aspect ratio of the tunnel cross-section. Smoke movement was evaluated by analysis of vertical temperature distribution 3 m downstream from the fire source. Elevation of smoke interface according to N percent rule was under about 60% of tunnel height.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.1998-2004
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• 2003

Numerical study were performed to analyze for fire safety in railway tunnel with forced ventilation vents. For the condition of train fires with heat release rate of 30 MW, unsteady three dimensional analysis were carried out to investigate the effects of smoke movements, the heat transfer and $CO_2$ concentrations and in double track tunnel with two vents. Among three operation modes of forced ventilations at two vents, the exhaust-exhaust mode of the vent represents the best performance for the evacuation of passengers to avoid the fire.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 2008.04a
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• pp.218-221
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• 2008

The real scale fire suppression test inside a road tunnel were carried out for water spray systems. The dimension of the tunnel is 7.5m in height and 11.6m in width. 3 different water spray nozzle systems with low operating pressure less than 3.5 bar were used in the experiment. Two types of fires were tested. One is a $1.4m^2$ heptane pool fire and the other is a 2000CC passenger car fire. From the experiment, the spray densities of tested systems were about $6.0\;l/min/m^2$ which is currunt domestic guideline. Although all the systems cannot extinguish the tested fires, it was found that they can reduce the tunnel temperature and have a capability to control and suppress the tested fire.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.135-141
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• 2004

The present paper concerns a smoke movement in a tunnel fire with a vertical shaft. The model tunnel measured 13.4m long, 0.4m wide and 0.4m high. The cross section is 1： 20 of a full scale tunnel. Ethanol was used as a fuel. The fire size in model tests varied from 1.35 kW to 13.37 kW, which corresponds to full scale fires of 2.41 to 23.91 MW. Smoke front velocity and temperatrue were decreased due to the vertical shaft install. Temperature was reduced maximum about 2$0^{\circ}C$ at ceiling and about 23$^{\circ}C$ at vertical position. CO concentration was reduced as the vent width widened. When vent width was more than 15 cm, CO concentration was not reached 100 ppm. Descent degree of the smoke layer was confirmed through the visualization.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.914-921
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• 2005

In this study, the 1/20 reduced-scale experiment using Froude scaling were conducted to investigate the effect of longitudinal ventilation velocity on the burning rate in tunnel fires. The methanol pool fires with heat release rate ranging from 2.02 kW to 6.15 kW and the n-heptane pool fires with heat release rate ranging from 2.23 kW to 15.6 kW were used. The burning rate of fuel was obtained by measuring the fuel mass at the load cell. The temperature distributions were observed by K-type thermocouples in order to investigate smoke movement. The ventilation velocity in the tested tunnel was controlled by inverter of the wind tunnel. In methanol pool fire, the increase in ventilation velocity reduces the burning rate. On the contrary in n-heptane pool fire, the increase in ventilation velocity induces large burning rate. The reason for above conflicting phenomena lies on the difference of burning rate. In methanol pool fire, the cooling effect outweighs the supply effect of oxygen to fire plume, and in n-heptane pool vice versa.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.15 no.1 s.54
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• pp.55-60
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• 2005

In this study, the 1/20 reduced-scale experiments using Froude scaling were conducted to investigate the effect of longitudinal ventilation on the variation of burning rate in tunnel fires. The methanol square pool fires with heat release rate ranging from 3.57 kW to 10.95 kW were used. The burning rate of fuel was obtained by measured mass using load cell and temperature distribution were measured by K-type theomocouples in order to investigate smoke movement. The wind tunnel was connected with one side of the tested tunnel, and logitudinal ventilation velocity in the tested tunnel was controlled by power of the wind tunnel. In methanol fire case, the increase in ventilation velocity decreased the turning rate due to the direct cooling of fire plume. For the same dimensionless velocity(V), homing rate decreased as the size of pool fire increased.