• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.119-127
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• 2011

Because of most notably the increase in vehicular traffic in Korea, as measured by highway transport usage, relief is being sought by expanding the construction of highways after 1970s'. These highways have opened up over 70 % of the mountainous areas in Korea's country side which includes the construction of tunnels. Currently there are 607 tunnels installed that are being maintained and by 2015, under the next medium-term plan, Korea will build an additional 440 tunnels. In addition, the use of 1,000m double-pole tunnels is expected to increase significantly in 256 locations. There is no doubt that these tunnels will relieve traffic congestion and aid improved communications, but halfclosed underground highway tunnels in particular are required to reduce tunnel fires caused by poor vehicle maintenance, and other factors such as speeding motorists that increase the number of vehicular accidents. Double-pole tunnels in 1,000m length over require vehicle drivers to be more cautious in terms of the continuous speed limit, judged by how devastating most of car-crash fires within these tunnels can be. In order to prevent these disasters, a full-length tunnel speed enforcement system should be considered mandatorily in legal clauses.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.15 no.3 s.56
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• pp.177-184
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• 2005

The Sapaesan tunnel, the longest twin tube tunnel (4km) in Korea with 4 lanes each, is under construction with two years of delayed schedule because of the strong opposition from environmental bodies. Therefore, maximizing the construction efficiency was needed in tunnel project to compensate for time delay. This study includes improvements in the construction of the Sapaesan tunnel such as increasing excavation length and changing excavation sequence. In this paper the system for predicting tunnel face ahead is also introduced. Bulk-Emulsion explosive and Cylinder-Cut method were adopted in tunnel blasting to increase the excavation length. Optimum tunnel excavation step was designed to make up delayed time. Tunnel foe mapping, TSP survey and geological prediction system using computerized jumbo-drill were performed fnr safe construction of long and large twin tube tunnel.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.523-531
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• 2015

Air quality was monitored in four roadway tunnels located near Seoul metropolitan area from 7:00AM to 9:00AM. PM10 concentrations range $111{\sim}268{\mu}g/m^3$, which are 2~5 times higher than annual standard $50{\mu}g/m^3$, and PM2.5 concentrations range $35{\sim}65{\mu}g/m^3$, which are 1.5~2.5 times higher than annual standard $25{\mu}g/m^3$. Benzene concentrations range 300~500 ppb, which are 200~300 times higher than 1.5 ppb which is air quality standard. Four-month long term air quality monitoring and test results in one of long tunnels show that PM10 range $30{\sim}400{\mu}g/m^3$ and over 97% of them can be removed by bag filter, effectively. Finally, benzene concentrations range 250~350 ppb.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.23-33
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• 2020

As the scale of the economy expands, the number of cases of damage in enclosed spaces such as tunnels is increasing due to the accident of transportation vehicles of dangerous substances such as explosive flammable materials that have increased rapidly. In the case of road tunnels in particular, in the aspect of protection against the long-winding trend and the environment in the downtown area, the number of cases of passing through the downtown area increases, and securing the safety of structures against unexpected extreme disasters such as explosions during tunnel passage is very urgent. For this reason, developed countries are already conducting a review of internal bombardment, but there are almost no evaluation and countermeasures for explosion risk in Korea. Therefore, in this study, in order to evaluate the explosion safety of road tunnels, a boiling liquid explosive explosion (BLEVE), which is considered to have the greatest explosion load among vehicles driving on the road, is set as a reference explosion source, and the equivalent TNT explosion load is used for simulation of the explosion. A method of conversion was presented. In addition, by applying the derived explosion load, dynamic behavior simulation was performed by assuming various variables for the tunnel, and the explosion safety of the tunnel was analyzed.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.235-243
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• 2003

Recent worldwide trends show that tunnel length is getting longer, and the demand for longitudinal ventilation system with jet-fans in highway tunnels has also increased mainly due to the economic reasons. Improvements in vehicle engine subsequently reduced required ventilation rate(Qreq) which is the decisive factor in choosing the optimal ventilation system. Qreq contour map is a graph that defines the relationship among tunnel length, grade and required ventilation rate. It is important to understand the variation of Qreq in order to evaluate the characteristics of ventilation system with jet fans. Therefore this study aims at studying a graphical method for determining the characteristics of jet-fm ventilation system using Qreq contour map. Also, this study focuses on traffic composition on local highways.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.749-760
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• 2017

Recently, the proportion of tunnel structures in roads and railways has increased rapidly. Along with this trend, the rate of occurrence of cracks and dropouts in concrete lining of tunnel structures is increasing. Generally, maintenance of such concrete lining is normalized and managed as the core of maintenance work in tunnel maintenance. However, the maintenance of the tunnel pavement is important in securing driver in the tunnel. In the design of tunnels, the underground condition of the tunnel is designed to be in good rock condition, so there have not been many cases of cracks in the tunnel pavement in the past. Recently, the construction of tunnel structures has been rapidly increased, and the length of the tunnels has become longer.Tunnel pavement installed in these ground conditions is increasing the occurrence of cracks in the pavement due to decrease of bearing capacity of the pavement after a long time. In this study, FWD and GPR were conducted to analyze the types of cracks and the reduction of bearing capacity in the tunnel.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Rock Mechanics Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.249-260
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• 2008

Although the accident rate is lower than the road tunnel, fire in railway tunnel can bring large damage of human life. In the high speed railway tunnel, the possibility of the railway-disaster (fire) is growing in consideration of the speedy railway and the tunnel length. For that reason, MLTM (Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs) published "Rules about the Safety Standard of Railroad (2005.10.27)" and "The Detailed Safety Standard of Railroad (2006.9.22)". According to those, QRA(Quantitative Risk Analysis) technique is recommended to be applied to railway tunnel design which is longer than 1km for assuring the safety function and estimating the risk. However, it is difficult to perform the disaster prevention design due to lack of the detailed standards about event scenario, fire intensity, incidence rate of accidents etc. Therefore, This paper introduces the case of tunnel design for disaster prevention of the Honam high speed railway including the detailed standards of QRA and reasonable safety facilities.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.325-337
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• 2021

On the road and rail tunnels, the evacuation pathway and facilities such as smoke-control and fire suppression system are essential in tunnel fire. In the long twin tunnels, the cross-connection tunnel is usually designed to evacuate from the tunnel where the fire broke out to the other tunnel. In twin shield tunnels, the segment lining has to be demolished to construct the cross-connection tunnel. Considering the modern shield TBM is mostly the closed chamber type, the exposure of underground soil induced by removal of steel segment lining is the most danger construction step in the shield tunnel construction. This case study introduces the excavation method using the thrust of large steel pipe and reviews the measured data after the construction. The large steel pipe thrust method for the cross-connection tunnel can stabilize the excavated face with the two mechanisms. Firstly, the soil in front of excavated face is cylindrically pre-supported by the large steel pipe. Secondly, the excavated face is supported by the plugging effect caused by the soil pressed into the steel pipe. It was reviewed that the large steel pipe thrust method in the cross-connection tunnel is enough to secure the construct ability and stability in soil from the measurement results about the deformation and stress of steel pipe.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.243-248
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• 2015

Domestic road and railroad construction have been increasingly growing and for reasons of mitigating traffic congestion, urban plan and refurbishment project, deeper and longer tunnels have been built. The event of fire is the most fatal accident in a tunnel, and it can be very disastrous with a high possibility. In this study, QRA (Quantitative Risk Analysis) which is one of quantitative risk analysis approaches was applied to tunnel fire safety design and the evaluation of QRA cases and the cost comparison of QRA methods were carried out. In addition analysis of risk reduction effect of tunnel fire safety system was conducted using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) and the priority of major factors that could mitigate the risk in tunnel fire was presented. As a result, significant cost reduction effect could be obtained by incorporating QRA and it is expected to design fire safety system rationally. The priority of fire safety system based on risk mitigation effect by fire safety system considering the cost is in order of water pipe, emergency lighting, evacuation passage and smoke control system.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.727-736
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• 2021

Road tunnel lengths are increasing. Some 1,300 tunnels with 1,102 km in length had been increased till 2019 from 2010. There are 64 tunnels over 3,000 m in length, with their total length adding up to 276.7 km. Safety facilities in the event of a tunnel fire are critical so as to prevent large-scale casualties. Standards for installing disaster prevention facilities are being proposed based on the guidelines of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, but they may be limited to deep underground tunnels. This study was undertaken to provide guidelines for the spacing of evacuation connection passages and the widths of evacuation connection doors. Evacuation with various spacing and widths was simulated in regards to evacuation time, which is the measure of safety, using the evacuation analysis simulation software EXODUS Ver.6.3 and the fire/smoke analysis software SMARTFIRE Ver.4.1. Evacuation connection gates with widths of 0.9 m and 1.2 m, and spacings of 150 m to 250 m, were set to every 20 m. In addition, longitudinal slopes of 6 % and 0 % were considered. It was determined to be safe when the evacuation completion time was shorter than the delay diffusion time. According to the simulation results, all occupants could complete evacuation before smoke spread regardless of the width of the evacuation connection door when the longitudinal slope was 6 % and the interval of evacuation connection passage was 150 m. When the evacuation connection passage spacing was 200 m and the evacuation connection gate width was 1.2 m, all occupants could evacuate when the longitudinal slope was 0 %. Due to difference in evacuation speed according to the longitudinal slope, the evacuation time with a 6 % slope was 114 seconds shorter (with the 190 m connection passage) than with a 0 % slope. A shorter spacing of evacuation connection passages may reduce the evacuation time, but this is difficult to implement in practice because of economic and structural limitations. If the width of the evacuation junction is 1.2 m, occupants could evacuate faster than with a 0.9 m width. When the width of a connection door is 1.2 m with appropriate connection passage spacing, it might provide a means to increase economic efficiency and resolve structural limitations while securing evacuation safety.