• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.451-462
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• 2011

The smoke control system plays the most important role in securing evacuation environment when a fire occurs in road tunnels. Smoke control methods in road tunnels are classified into two categories which are longitudinal ventilation system and transverse ventilation system. In this study it is intended to review the characteristics of smoke behavior by performing numerical analysis for calculating the optimal smoke exhaust air volume with scaled-model and simulation when a fire occurs in tunnels in which transverse ventilation is applied, and for obtaining the basic data required for the design of smoke exhaust systems by deriving optimal smoke exhaust operational conditions for various conditions. As a result of this study, when the critical velocity in the tunnel is 1.75 m/s and 2.5 m/s, the optimal smoke exhaust air volume has to be more than $173m^3/s$, $236m^3/s$ for the distance of the smoke moving which can limit the distance to 250 m. In addition, in case of uniform exhaust the generated smoke is effectively taken away if the two exhaust holes near the fire region are opened at the same time.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.215-222
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• 2010

An experimental study was carried out on a reduced scale model tunnel to investigate the efficiency of disaster prevention at underground and ground ventilation equipments for the fire in road tunnels. Based on Froude modeling, the 1/50 scaled model tunnel (20 m long) was manufactured. The vertical shafts that are used in the analysis of efficiency of disaster prevention are the two models that had considered when the real tunnels are designed and the amounts of smoke exhaust are applied the miniature of the real tunnels' smoke exhaust, 560 and $280\;m^3/s$. As the result of analysis, it is the possible the emissions of the entire quantity of CO gas through the vertical shafts. In the ground ventilation equipments, the concentration of CO is discharged 2.23~2,73 ppm smaller than the underground ventilation equipments. And the temperature rise in the ground ventilation equipments is $0.53{\sim}0.94^{\circ}C$ lower than in the underground ventilation equipments because of a cooling effect of the surface of the tunnel wall. As a result of analysis of CO concentration and the temperature rise in the modeling ventilation equipment, the position of ground ventilation equipment is more effective than the underground ventilation equipment in disaster prevention measures.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.626-631
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• 2018

An emergency evacuation support system is used to maintain evacuation routes by pressurizing a space inside screens. In cases of fire, it is important to understand the thermal distributions in the tunnel for preventing system failure. In this study, we numerically investigated the effect of fire on an emergency evacuation support system in a large fabric store with some fire scenarios with different combustibles. The critical temperature for system failures was assumed to be $200^{\circ}C$. As a result, the highest temperature was predicted in the ceiling part due to the effect of a ceiling jet, and the fire safety of the screen was secured at distances of 20 to 30 m according to the heat release rate. To prevent the inflow of smoke into the system, it is necessary to maintain more than 5 Pa if positive pressure inside the smoke screen. The results of this study could be useful for designing an emergency evacuation support system.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.92-119
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• 2010

As the necessity to utilize deep-placed underground spaces is increasing, we have to seriously consider the safety problems arising from the U/G spaces which is a restricted environment. Due to the higher cost of land compensation for above ground area and environmental issues, the plan to utilize deep-placed U/G spaces is currently only being established for the construction of U/G road network and GTX. However it is also expected that the U/G spaces are to be used as a living space because of the growing desires to change the above ground areas into the environmentally green spaces. Accordingly it is necessary to protect the U/G environments which is vulnerable against desasters caused by fire, explosion, flooding, terrorism, electric power failure, etc. properly. We want to introduce the principles of the Quantitative Risk Assessment(QRA) method for preparedness against the desasters arising from U/G environments, and also want to introduce an example of QRA which was implemented for the GOTTHARD tunnel which is the longest one in Europe.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.204-210
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• 2019

In case of a fire inside a tunnel, unlike ordinary roads, it is very difficult for a driver to obtain visibility, and a large accident is highly likely to occur. In this study, the smoke behavior, visible distance, and CO concentration of a jet fan were analyzed using the NIST fire simulation (FDS). All analyses were set to HRRPUA (Heat Release Rate Per Area) 3.6MW/m and all the analysis times were set to 600s. In all analyses by CFD, the results were confirmed at y=30m and y=110m, and smoke behavior analysis, visible range analysis, and carbon monoxide concentration were confirmed according to the diameter and flow rate. As the size and flow rate of the jet fan increased, the visibility distance was high at y=30m, and the concentration of carbon monoxide was also confirmed to be 0 ppm. Therefore, proper setting of the jet fan diameter and flow rate will be an excellent solution for fires in tunnels, and taking refuge at upstream area of a re-ventilated fan can reduce the number of casualties.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.659-677
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• 2022

Hydrogen is emerging as a next-generation energy source and development and supply of FCEV (hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle) is expected to occur rapidly. Accordingly, measures to respond to hydrogen car accidents are required and researches on the safety of hydrogen cars are being actively conducted. In this study, In this study, we developed a hydrogen car accident scenarios suitable for domestic conditions for the safety evaluation of hydrogen car in road tunnels through analysis of existing experiments and research data and analyzed and presented the hazard distance according to the accident results of the hydrogen car accident scenarios. The accident results according to the hydrogen car accident scenario were classified into minor accidents, general fires, jet flames and explosions. The probability of occurrence of each accident results are predicted to be 93.06%, 1.83%, 2.25%, and 2.31%. In the case of applying the hydrogen tank specifications of FCEV developed in Korea, the hazard distance for explosion pressure (based on 16.5 kPa) is about 17.6 m, about 6 m for jet fire, up to 35 m for fireball in road tunnel with a standard cross section (72 m²).

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.563-574
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• 2020

Currently, road tunnels and railroad tunnels are building smoke control systems to emit toxic gases and smoke from fires. Among the various smoke control systems, the transverse smoke control system has the disadvantage that air supply or exhaust is performed on only half of the cross-section, rather than air supply or exhaust on the entire cross-section of the tunnel as air is supplied or exhausted by partitioning the wind path. Therefore, this study analyzed the effect of exhaustion through numerical analysis and scaled model tests on the zoning smoke control system, which improved the limitations of the transverse smoke control system. As a result of the scaled model test, the transverse ventilation system exhibited a 25.6% smoke control rate based on the state where no smoke was controled, and zoning smoke control system showed a smoke control rate of 40.8%. In addition, as a result of numerical analysis, it was found that transverse ventilation system did not control fire smoke spreading from the tunnel and continued to spread. On the other hand, zoning smoke control system was found to be smoke controled within a certain section due to the air curtain effect and the flue gas effect.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.1161-1175
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• 2018

An unexpected event could be easily followed by a large secondary accident due to the limitation in sight of drivers in road tunnels. Therefore, a series of automated incident detection systems have been under operation, which, however, appear in very low detection rates due to very low image qualities on CCTVs in tunnels. In order to overcome that limit, deep learning based tunnel incident detection system was developed, which already showed high detection rates in November of 2017. However, since the object detection process could deal with only still images, moving direction and speed of moving vehicles could not be identified. Furthermore it was hard to detect stopping and reverse the status of moving vehicles. Therefore, apart from the object detection, an object tracking method has been introduced and combined with the detection algorithm to track the moving vehicles. Also, stopping-reverse discrimination algorithm was proposed, thereby implementing into the combined incident detection processes. Each performance on detection of stopping, reverse driving and fire incident state were evaluated with showing 100% detection rate. But the detection for 'person' object appears relatively low success rate to 78.5%. Nevertheless, it is believed that the enlarged richness of image big-data could dramatically enhance the detection capacity of the automatic incident detection system.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.517-534
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• 2021

Hydrogen fuel is emerging as an new energy source to replace fossil fuels in that it can solve environmental pollution problems and reduce energy imbalance and cost. Since hydrogen is eco-friendly but highly explosive, there is a high concern about fire and explosion accidents of hydrogen fueled vehicles. In particular, in semi-enclosed spaces such as tunnels, the risk is predicted to increase. Therefore, this study was conducted on the applicability of the equivalent TNT model and the numerical analysis method to evaluate the hydrogen explosion pressure in the tunnel. In comparison and review of the explosion pressure of 6 equivalent TNT models and Weyandt's experimental results, the Henrych equation was found to be the closest with a deviation of 13.6%. As a result of examining the effect of hydrogen tank capacity (52, 72, 156 L) and tunnel cross-section (40.5, 54, 72, 95 m²) on the explosion pressure using numerical analysis, the explosion pressure wave in the tunnel initially it propagates in a hemispherical shape as in open space. Furthermore, when it passes the certain distance it is transformed a plane wave and propagates at a very gradual decay rate. The Henrych equation agrees well with the numerical analysis results in the section where the explosion pressure is rapidly decreasing, but it is significantly underestimated after the explosion pressure wave is transformed into a plane wave. In case of same hydrogen tank capacity, an explosion pressure decreases as the tunnel cross-sectional area increases, and in case of the same cross-sectional area, the explosion pressure increases by about 2.5 times if the hydrogen tank capacity increases from 52 L to 156 L. As a result of the evaluation of the limiting distance affecting the human body, when a 52 L hydrogen tank explodes, the limiting distance to death was estimated to be about 3 m, and the limiting distance to serious injury was estimated to be 28.5~35.8 m.