Experimental investigation of mass loss rate and spatial temperature distribution of the pool fire in tunnel

Abstract

Tunnel fires are accompanied by high temperatures that severely threaten the tunnel stability and the personnel safety, but the burning rate of liquid fuel and spatial temperature distribution near the pool fire had been little studied in a full-scale tunnel. To address this issue, a series of pool fire tests were conducted in a reduced-scale tunnel and a full-scale tunnel, respectively, to investigate the mass burning rate of liquid fuel, temperature variations of the tunnel ceiling and the vertical temperature distribution around the fire source. The results show that the burning of heavy naphtha has a greater damaging effect on the tunnel construction compared to sweet crude oil and high sulfur crude oil. Furthermore, an unified correlation was proposed to describe the fuel mass loss rate in the tunnel. The results obtained in this work would provide a reference for the prevention and rescue of tunnel fires.