Analysis of a new strategy for emergency ventilation and escape scenario in long railway tunnels in the fire mode

Abstract

The creation of a safe path for evacuating passengers from a tunnel during fire accidents is an important function of a mechanical ventilation system in tunnels. In this work, the operation of emergency ventilation in the fire mode in a long railway tunnel with push–pull ventilation shafts is analyzed using a fire dynamics simulator. As the passenger trains are lengthy – and so is a tunnel – when trains pass through a tunnel, the position of fire on the train becomes an important parameter for rescuing the passengers through a safe path. The novelty of this study is in the design of emergency ventilation scenarios that consider the position of fire on the train in addition to the tunnel ventilation shafts. For this case study, a lengthy (8 km) urban railway tunnel in Tehran with four rail tracks and eight ventilation shafts is considered for designing emergency ventilation scenarios and control of fire products. The fire source is a passenger train wagon with a 25-MW heat release rate. It is shown that, during the rescue operation of the passengers, the location of fire on the train may lead to reverse the ventilation scenario compared with the traditional ones that use only the tunnel shafts. Also, it is observed that there is a region with 50 m radius around each ventilation shaft, i.e. the absolute exhaust zone, where the ventilation system must be set at the exhaust mode due to the presence of fire, to minimize the spreading of fire products downstream. All the logical scenarios of the tunnel ventilation system are designed and demonstrated to create a critical ventilation velocity in the tunnel, which would help in developing a more precise control panel of the tunnel in the fire mode.