Fleischmann C M, “Using peak heat release rate to determine the fire risk level of road tunnels

Abstract: A wide range of fire incidents can occur in a road tunnel, e.g. a fire in the cargo com-partment of a goods vehicle, carelessness due to discarded smoker’s materials or loss of vehicle control, and a crash resulting in a multiple-vehicle fire. The number of possible fire scenarios is numerous and so, for design applications, rather than attempting to analyse every possible event using a deterministic approach, a preliminary analysis using a quantitative risk assessment approach should be considered. This paper presents a risk assessment methodology to identify the possible fire scenarios that can occur in a road tunnel in order to specify design fire require-ments for smoke control systems. The analysis considers factors such as legislation, vehicle fuel load, traffic mix in the tunnel, vehicle accident rate, and causes of vehicle ignition