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Abstract
The emergency response to a case when a high-speed train caught fire in tunnel and the way of passengers evacuation before the train stopped were analyzed first. It is suggested that passengers in the burning coach should evacuate to adjacent coaches before the train stops instead of breaking the windows of the burning coach and the train on fire should keep on moving forward until it leaves the tunnel or arrives at the nearest emergent rescue station. A CRH1 train fire occurring in the Shiziyang Tunnel of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hongkong Passenger Dedicated Line was taken as an example to simulate the case of passenger evacuation when a train on fire was forced to stop in a tunnel. Smoke spread and the passenger evacuation process for the worst-case scenario in the tunnel were simulated, the rationality of setting of the parameters such as the rescue passage width, cross passage entrance width and cross passage spacing was evaluated. The results show as follows: A fire occurring in the middle part of a train is more dangerous, the danger to passengers is mainly from the toxicity and opacity of smoke; the rescue passage width of 1.5 m, the cross passage entrance width of 1.5 m and the maximum cross passage spacing of 500 m can satisfy safety evacuation requirements, however, crowding occurs near the train and the safety factor of evacuation is low; for newly built tunnels of passenger dedicated lines, It is recommended that both rescue passage width and cross passage entrance width are more than 2.0 m.
... To reduce the impact of fire on passengers, it is necessary to reduce the time for exposing to a dangerous environment and limit the fire development as soon as possible. The time from ignition to threatening passengers' safety is called available safety evacuation time (ASET, for short), while, the time from ignition to safety evacuation is called required safe evacuation time (RSET, for short) [13,17]. When ASET is longer than RSET, it is considered safe for passengers. ...
The Qiongzhou Channel tunnel, which is under construction in China, is taken as an example to study the evacuation of a train in a tunnel. Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) and Pathfinder software are utilized to simulate the fire spreading and personnel evacuation. When a fire broke out in the tunnel, the process can be divided into three stages according to the development of fire, which are carriage fire period, fire spread period, and tunnel fire period. The safety of people evacuation in different stages was studied. It has been found that when a fire occurs at the carriage center, people can evacuate to the adjacent carriages safely. In the event of a fire happens at the carriage end, high temperature and smoke would threaten the safety of passengers. If the fire train could drive to the emergency rescue station, it has been proved 200 s ahead to protect passengers than driving outside, and people can evacuate to safety area within the available safety evacuation time. The results show that it is necessary to have an emergency rescue station in the extra-long channel tunnel, and cooling equipment and fire-extinguishing installations should be equipped in carriages to ensure passengers safety.
To acquire the evacuation time and average evacuation velocity of young adults under a train fire situation in railway tunnel, experiments and numerical simulations were conducted. According to the results, if the fire train continues running, the number of passengers in adjacent compartment affects the evacuation procedure in fire compartment greatly. The average velocity decreases by 45.7% when the adjacent compartment is 40% overloaded. If the fire train stops immediately, evacuation in the fire compartment is influenced greatly by the number and location of opened train doors. The average evacuation velocity decreases by 21.6% when two doors are opened on one side other than on two sides. Also, it is advisable to set the evacuation velocities of young adult male and female to be 1.2 m/s and 1.0 m/s respectively under train fire situation in railway tunnel. The results have important implications for rail safety.
A series of large-scale vehicle burning tests and tests of a running train on fire and other related studies for fire prevention have been carried out by Japanese National Railways. Based on the results of these tests, the vehicles are progressively being rendered noninflammable; anti-train fire measures in tunnels are being taken; and the fire-fighting manual for train crews has been appropriately revised. The paper summarizes the progress and results of tests and research on the important subject.
Various ways exist to represent a design fire curve for tunnels. These can include different fire growth rates or combinations of fire growth rates with constant levels of heat release rate (HRR) coupled to a decay period. This means that the curve has to be represented with different mathematical expressions for different time periods. A more convenient way is to describe the design fire curve with a single mathematical expression. Such a curve has been presented by the author (H. Ingason, Fire development in large tunnel fires, 8th International Symposium on Fire Safety Science, Beijing, China, 18–23 September 2005, pp. 1497–1508), but it does not include a constant HRR period. This paper presents a new, single exponential, design fire curve with a constant maximum HRR. A presentation of available design curves is given as well.