The influence of longitudinal ventilation systems on fires in tunnels

Carvel, Richard; Beard, Alan N.; Jowitt, Paul

doi:10.1016/s0886-7798(01)00025-6

Cited by 126 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Therefore, the ventilation system is one of the most important safety measures in tunnels, since it affects smoke propagation, temperatures in the fire zone, concentration of contaminants, visibility, etc. (Carvel et al, 2001). The ventilation strategy to be adopted depends on the particular tunnel geometry, traffic density and whether the tunnel is bidirectional or unidirectional (Piarc, 2011).…”

Section: Case Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since this paper focuses on the safety assessment technique, the information presented in this section is limited to what the authors regard crucial for the implementation of the STAMP-based road tunnel safety assessment. For more technical information about this topic the interested reader is referred to Carvel et al (2001), Piarc (2011) and the references therein.…”

Section: Case Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Introducing the STAMP method in road tunnel safety assessment

2012

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After the tremendous accidents in European road tunnels over the past decade, many safety assessment methods have been proposed worldwide, most of them based on Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA). However, QRAs based on causal chains and event modeling (i.e. fault and event trees), have been subject to strong criticism for their limitations to capture the overall risk picture of complex socio-technical systems. In such systems, human and organizational factors, software errors, design flaws and the safety culture of the system are not efficiently handled by the current QRA methods and systemic accident models have been proposed as an alternative approach to better understand and manage safety. The aim of this work is to overview the limitations of current QRAs in the road tunnels field, and to introduce a STAMPbased technique as an alternative method for establishing a proactive safety strategy and evaluating the overall safety of these critical infrastructures, with the objective to overcome the QRAs limitations. The STAMP method is applied to a case study analysis in the safety critical process of tunnel ventilation during an emergency.

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Section: Case Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Case Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introducing the STAMP method in road tunnel safety assessment

2012

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“…in addition to the effect of the tunnel, have studied effect of the ventilation on the HRR from a fire in a tunnel [10,11]. From a number of test series including tests with wood cribs and HGVs (heavy goods vehicles), they estimated that for a two-lane tunnel with an air flow velocity of 2 m/s the fire growth rate would increase with 3-4 times and the maximum HRR with 1.5 times compared to the natural ventilation case [11]. For a velocity of 10 m/s, the corresponding values were estimated to be 6 and 3, respectively.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One should note that only ref. [11] refers to a case for a two lane tunnel; ref. [10,13] refer to fires in a single lane tunnel.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Effect of Air Velocity on Heat Release Rate and Fire Development during Fires in Tunnels

Lönnermark¹,

Ingason²

2008

Fire Saf. Sci.

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Model scale fire tests using wood cribs of different porosity in a ventilated tunnel are presented. The study focuses on the effect of air velocity on maximum Heat Release Rate (HRR) and fire growth rate. To study the influence of different parameters, free burn tests and fire tests inside a model-scale tunnel were performed. The tunnel was 10 m long, the widths used were 0.3 m, 0.45 m, and 0.6 m and the heights used were 0.25 m and 0.4 m. If compared to a normal traffic tunnel, these measures can correspond to a tunnel with a scale of 1:20.The tests show that for a higher porosity wood crib and higher velocities than 0.45 m/s an increasing ventilation rate increases the maximum HRR in the range of 1.3 to 1.7 times the value measured outside the tunnel under ambient conditions. For the lower porosity wood crib and higher velocities, the corresponding increase in the maximum HRR was 1.8 and 2.0, respectively. When compared to ambient conditions inside the tunnel based mass loss rate, this increase was found lower. For all cases when the velocity was 0.22 m/s and the low ceiling height was used, the ratio was found to be lower than one. This was not the case when high ceiling height was used. For the case with a velocity of 0.67 m/s, the fire growth rate increased by a factor of 5-10 times the free burn case. The value depends on the dimensions of the tunnel cross section.

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