Citation

Vidmar P, Petelin S. Promet 2004; 16(5): 285-295.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, Faculty of Traffic and Transport Sciences, University of Zagreb)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Fire modeling in enclosed areas, including railway and road tunnels, is a complex research area with immediate practical benefits of increasing safety of people. This article describes a fire model that characterizes the behavior of smoke and fire in a road tunnel. The model focuses on the effect of air supply and the exhaust system on smoke movement. The model uses the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), a computational fluid dynamics code, to depict a 200 meters long road tunnel. FDS is used to simulate fire dynamics behavior in three different scenarios: natural ventilation, forced ventilation with axial ventilators, and vertical smoke extraction. The simulation has shown that the smoke extraction was high enough to limit the smoke extension in the area between extraction openings. However, the velocity of smoke cloud movement is reduced because of extraction. The main problem found is the slumping effect that keeps the smoke cloud at lower levels inside the tunnel.