Design of Fire Source for Railway Vehicles and Measurement of Critical Velocity in Reduced-Scale Tunnels

Abstract

In this study, the authors designed a reduced-scale railway vehicle fire, which was necessary for evaluating the fire safety of railway tunnels using a reduced model. To overcome the shortcomings of the methods used in conventional reduced-scale railway tunnel tests, the authors simulated the fire source of a railway vehicle using a methanol fire source for fire buoyancy, and a smoke cartridge for smoke visualization. Therefore, the heat release mass consumption rates of various methane trays were measured using a cone calorimeter (ISO 5660). The critical ventilation velocity in the railway tunnels was obtained using the designed fire source of the railway vehicle, which was evaluated by the measured temperature at the top of the tunnel as well as laser visualization.