An experimental evaluation of the toxic gas emission in case of vehicle fires

Fire safety in tunnels enables to design safety measures to ensure a people safe evacuation in case of fire. Such an analysis considers the different impacts of fire on people as temperature, visibility but also toxicity. Most of standard curves are based on quite old fire tests without any toxic gas qualification. Very few fire tests were previously achieved in that way. Based on those few tests, some standard fire emission factors were proposed. The objective of this paper is to review those emission factors, not only regarding the nature of toxic compounds generated but also through a carbon monoxide equivalent factor. To reach this objective, two series of tests were performed. The first concerns individual combustible compounds of a car as plastics, tyres and others. The second focusses on full car burning tests with smoke analysis. Those two series of tests lead to an analysis of the smoke toxicity and a comparison of emission factors with standard ones