• 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.