Nobuyoshi Kawabata

On the Smoke Propagation of a Fire in a Tunnel With Concentrated Exhaust Ventilation

In recent years, tunnel fire accidents of about 20 occur every year in Japan. The Nihonzaka and the Sakai tunnel fire accidents are as famous typical examples. When concentrated exhaust ventilation device is activated in such a tunnel fire, it is of concern that the people who take shelter receive damage from the fire smoke. When a tunnel fire occurs, the concentrated exhaust ventilation device is stopped in Japan. Therefore, the research on the use of concentrated exhaust ventilation device at a tunnel fire has not advanced in Japan. The purpose of this study is to clarify the smoke propagation when concentrated exhaust ventilation device is activated. The model tunnel in the scale of 1/5 was used in this study. Froude scaling law was used to make the experimental results of the model tunnel correspond to the real scale tunnel. The concentrated exhaust ventilation device installed on the model tunnel extracts the fire smoke from a chimney. The smoke distribution in the model tunnel was measured with smoke concentration meters. In the case that the exhaust ventilation device was activated, the smoke layer thickness of the downstream of the chimney thinned. However, in the upstream of the chimney, the smoke layer thickness did not change though the exhaust ventilation device was activated.© 2011 ASME