New approaches in fire protection for tunnels – The SOLIT project

Abstract

Automatic fire suppression systems for use in tunnels were often declined in past by experts due to several reasons. Not only there were worries that these water based systems could worsen the self - rescuing conditions because of destroying smoke layers but also endanger fire brigades by hot steam. Recent real scale fire tests have shown that most fears are without case and mostly were based on a lack of knowledge. Recently a mind changing process can be observed by most fire safety experts. This was aroused because again dramatic accidents have shown, that even after increasing fire safety in tunnels, there are still enormous problems regarding evacuation of people and safe work of fire fighters. Furthermore real scale fire tests, e.g. within the UPTUN project, have shown, that fixed fire suppression systems can handle some of these problems generally. But it also turned out, that there is still a lot more to learn about effects and behaviour of such systems and their practical usage in tunnels. The German research project SOLIT (Safety of Life in Tunnels) was started with the intention to pick up current knowledge about fire suppression systems for tunnels and try to give appropriate answers to open questions as well as develop a methodology how to assess effectiveness of such systems. Within the project a real scale fire test program is carried out to achieve these tasks. (A) This paper was presented at Safety in the underground space - Proceedings of the ITA-AITES 2006 World Tunnel Congress and the 32nd ITA General Assembly, Seoul, Korea, 22-27 April 2006. For the covering abstract see ITRD E129148. Reprinted with permission from Elsevier.