Re-direction of smoke flow in inclined tunnel fires

Abstract The re-direction of smoke flow in inclined tunnel fires refers to the phenomenon that the smoke flow direction suddenly changes due to the changes of thermal buoyancy or outside pressure or the activation of fans. This poses special risk for fire rescue services fighting fires in tunnels. Both small-scale tunnel fire tests (28 scenarios) and numerical simulations of full-scale tunnel fires (31 scenarios) were conducted to study this special phenomenon. A one-dimensional model was used to predict the flow velocity in the inclined tunnels, based on two different methods for calculating the mean smoke temperature (Method I and Method II, respectively). Results show that the smoke flow direction could be well predicted by the model with Method II. When the ventilation velocity is relatively large and the flow tends to be one dimensional, both methods produce similar results. Further, the influences of important factors on the re-direction of smoke flows were systematically analyzed. These factors include heat release rate, tunnel slope, tunnel length, friction factor, tunnel cross sectional area and fire source location.