Ventilation during a fire incident in a road tunnel with contra-flow traffic

Road tunnels require maintenance which might be achieved by closing one bore in the evening and operating the remaining bore in contra-flow. This introduces further design and operational considerations for the tunnel safety systems, which include tunnel ventilation. The major challenges occur for longitudinal ventilation systems in case of contra-flow traffic, particularly in cases where there may also be congestion, may expose more tunnel users to smoke if there is a vehicle fire. Smoke and evacuation analysis considered a fire incident during contraflow traffic inside a representative tunnel with a longitudinal ventilation system that consisted of fixed-speed jet fans. The analysis focused on providing the best practicable outcome for the safe evacuation of tunnel users. Based on these analyses it was predicted that not operating the ventilation system during a fire incident during contraflow provided the best outcome for evacuation of tunnel users. There would be the potential that, once evacuation has taken place and during intervention by the fire rescue services (FRS), the FRS would request the ventilation system to operate at maximum capacity pushing smoke towards the nearest tunnel portal to support the FRS to conduct a search and rescue as well as attempt to tackle the fire if assessed safe to do so.

• Record URL:
  • http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-52982
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/isbn/9789189049895
• Corporate Authors:

  RISE Research Institutes of Sweden

  ,   Sweden 
• Authors:
  • Feest, Daniel
  • Wong, Hing-Wai
• Conference:
  • Ninth International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and Security
  • Location: Munich , Germany
  • Date: 2020-3-11 to 2020-3-13
• Publication Date: 2020

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: pp 493-508
• Monograph Title: Proceedings from the Ninth International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and Security, Munich, Germany, March 11-13, 2020

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Emergencies; Evacuation; Fire; Tunnels; Ventilation systems
• ITRD Terms: 2184: Emergency; 9152: Evacuation; 1624: Fire; 9157: Fire protection ; 3374: Tunnel; 3392: Ventilation
• Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; I25: Design of Tunnels;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01845962
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI)
• ISBN: 9789189049895
• Files: ITRD, VTI
• Created Date: May 20 2022 2:06PM