• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.269-274
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• 2004

In this study reduced-scale experiments were conducted to determine the backlayering distance in tunnel fires. The 1/20 scale experiments were carried out under the Froude scaling using ethanol square pool fire ranging from 8 to 1km in each side with total heat release rate from 2.47 to 12.30 ㎾. It has been found that ventilation velocity increases with aspect ratio(tunnel height/tunnel width). At L$\_$B/$\^$*/ ＜5 the ventilation velocity increases proportional to the backlayering distance from 0.25 power of the heat release rate. However at L$\_$B/$\^$*/ $\geq$5 the ventilation velocity varies as the 0.3 power of the heat release rate.

• Journal of Industrial Technology
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• v.25 no.A
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• pp.191-201
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• 2005

A numerical analysis was done for a tunnel fire in a 1000m road tunnel. A cartesian coordinate was adopted to make a computational grid sytem which has 448,000 computational cells. A transient flow phenomena in the tunnel was simulated by the commercial code of PHEONICS from the ignition of fire to 600 seconds by the interval of 100 seconds. Total computational time of about 44 hours was required to get a convered solution in each time step. The purpose of this research is to analyze of the backlayering pheonomena and recirculation flow in a tunnel. The compuational results say that the backlayering does not happens near the fire of vehicle in this case because the vehicle fire is located at the outside of recirculation zone of flow ocuured near the jet fan. In this research, onset of backlayering pheonomena could be escaped if jet fan is set 95m in front of the the fire of vehicle.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.325-334
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• 2006

Understanding the airflow characteristics within the canopy structure installed between closely adjacent tunnels either for light adaptation or for protection from snow hazards is required for the normal ventilation as well as safety system design. Grade, horizontal alignment, cross-sectional area and shape are known to substantially influence the fire smoke behavior and their influences raise great concern for the safety design. This paper aims at studying the effects of tunnel geometrical characteristics and canopy installation on the ventilation and fire propagation through CFD analysis. In the case of 145m long canopy, 50% opening ratio is preferred with respect to the airflow pattern and ventilation efficiency. When a 20MW fire occurs in a 1.8km-long tunnel and four 1250mm reversible jet fans are instantly turned on, smoke concentration at 40m downstream of the fire decrease 13% for the upgrade tunnel with 2% gradient and increases 20% for -2% gradient, compared to the standard horizontal tunnel. Backlayering is observed within 45m-long segment toward the entrance in 2% down-graded tunnel. In a rectangular tunnel, there is no significant difference of smoke concentration as well as velocity profile from the standard crown tunnel. Three-laned tunnel shows lower level of both profiles and backlayering is detected up to 50m upstream of the fire, while the risky situation rapidly disappears thereafter.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.27-36
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• 2005

The objective of this study was to analyze the smoke movement and to investigate the effect of exhaust ventilation using by shafts for case of fire in long tunnels. Based on Froude modeling, the 1/50 scaled model tunnel (20 m long) was constructed by acrylic tubes and test were carried out systematically. The results of the shaft height test show that the effect on exhaust ventilation by a shaft delays the propagation time of backlayering, and the temperature decreases as the shaft height increases. If the fire occurs downstream of the shaft, the backlayering develops to get stronger by the shaft exhaust effect and then the propagation of CO and temperature increase along with propagation of CO. That is to say, in the case of fire downstream of the shaft, the shaft has the advantage of smoke exhaust effects, but it might result in a dangerous situation for the escaping passengers due to the more developed backlayering.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.465-474
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• 2010

Although the number of medium-length road tunnels, less than 1 km in length, has increased recently more than 30 percent each year, their ventilation and fire safety system design guidelines have not been established yet. The guidelines for long tunnel design are adopted even for the medium-length road tunnels. Therefore the necessity is brought up to optimize the ventilation and fire safety systems based on their own design guidelines. This study aims at determining the optimal start time of jet fan in case of 20 MW fires by analyzing smoke backlayering range, temperature distribution, range of poor visibility, evacuation time and critical velocity. The CFD study results are expected to contribute to propose the optimal fan operation mode.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.269-278
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• 2004

Recently, critical velocity has become a topic to attract most interests from the researchers in the field of tunnel safety. As the minimum velocity to prevent smoke backlayering during a fire, many equations have been proposed so far, and the following three equations are being considered as a standard method in Korea to calculate the capacity of smoke extraction fans. Equation by Kennedy based on Froude number, Tetzner' s equation with additional variable, ${\beta}$ to modify the Kennedy's equation, and the equation with the concept of super critical velocity by Wu are studied in this paper for the comparative purpose. A contour map describing the relationship between the critical velocity and the capacity of smoke extraction fans is proposed as a tool to calculate the number of jet fans for smoke control during a fire in the local tunnels.

• Journal of Industrial Technology
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• v.23 no.A
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• pp.9-13
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• 2003

Numerical experiments are done by a commercial code, PHOENICS to evaluate the backlayer phenomenon of smoke in case of the road tunnel fire. The independent and dependent variables are ventilation air velocity and the length of backlayer of smoke respectively. Hybrid scheme and ${\kappa}-{\varepsilon}$ turbulence model are adopted in the simulation process and mass residual is used as a convergence criterion. The experimental results say that the length of backlayer is reduced with the increase of ventilating air velocity and that there is a critical air velocity which prevents from the onset of backlayering phenomena. One finds that there is a fresh air region near the bottom of tunnel which could make the passenger escape safely from the polluted region by smoke. These phenomena come from the vertical stratification of the smoke air mixture in the tunnel.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.95-108
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• 2022

The increase in the use time of tunnel users due to the lengthening of the road tunnel may increase the evacuation time in case of fire, resulting in a large number of casualties. In order to reduce the casualties caused by fire, the "Road Tunnel Design Manual, Part 6 Tunnel" and "Road Tunnel Disaster Prevention Facility Installation and Management Guidelines" stipulate that ventilation facilities should be installed along with the extension of the tunnel. The ventilation system design factor considers the wind speed of the external natural wind to be at least 2.5 m/s, and it is applied upward according to the characteristics of the tunnel. As a result of analyzing the five-minute average wind speed data in the Daegwallyeong region for the past 6 years, it was analyzed that 15.8% of the windy days were winds of 10 m/s or more, and the maximum was 20 m/s. Therefore, in this study, when a fire occurs in a tunnel, the pattern of natural wind flowing into the tunnel and the backlayering distance of the tunnel fire smoke according to the maximum wind speed were analyzed. As a result, it was analyzed that a backflow of up to 490 m occurs when a gust of 20 m/s blows.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.50-54
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• 2003

The backlayer phenomena of smoke in the road tunnel is evaluated through numerical experiments. A commercial code, PHOENICS is used to simulate smoke flow in the road tunnel. The independent and dependent variables are ventilation air velocity and the length of backlayer of smoke respectively. Hybrid scheme and $textsc{k}-\varepsilon$ turbulence model is adopted in the simulation process and mass residual is used as a convergence criterion. The experimental results say that the length of backlayer is reduced linearly with the increase of ventilating air velocity and that there is a critical air velocity which prevents from the onset of backlayering phenomena. One finds that there is a fresh air region near the bottom of tunnel which could make the passenger escape from the region polluted by smoke. These phenomena come from the severe vertical stratification of the smoke air mixture in the tunnel.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.19 no.9
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• pp.662-668
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• 2007

In this study, jet fans are installed with 4 cases in the straight long tunnel; inlet-side setup, middle-side setup, outlet-side setup, and dispersion setup. A bus is selected as fired car, of which fire size is 20MW. And fired car locates at 100m, 700m, 1500m position from tunnel inlet, respectively. FLUENT, commercial finite-volume code, is used to analyze the performance. The velocity profile, $CO_2$ concentration, temperature distribution are examined for analysis. Performance of smoke control is compared by the backlayering length. Consequently, inlet-side setup of jet fans is a little more efficient than other cases considering the fire occurrence frequency in tunnel.