Experimental Investigation on Fire Smoke Temperature under Forced Ventilation Conditions in a Bifurcated Tunnel with Fires Situated in a Branch Tunnel

Abstract

In this work, a number of experiments were conducted in a reduced scale bifurcation tunnel with a ratio of 1:10 to explore the influence of the position of longitudinal fires (placed in branch tunnel) on smoke temperature profile under forced ventilation. Three heat release rates, six ventilation velocities, and three fire locations were considered. The main findings are summarized below, as follows: The temperature of smoke downstream of the main tunnel decreases with the rate of ventilation and longitudinal fire location. In contrast, the smoke temperature downstream of the fire source inside the branch tunnel drops with the ventilation velocity; the maximum temperature of the flame under the ceiling of the tunnel rises with longitudinal fire location. The dimensionless longitudinal smoke temperatures downstream of the main tunnel decrease exponentially with longitudinal distance, and the same observation is found in the branch tunnel. The attenuation coefficient k in the main tunnel increases with longitudinal ventilation velocity according to a power law but does not change significantly with longitudinal fire locations. However, the exponential coefficient k′ in the branch tunnel decreases linearly with ventilation velocity, whereas it increases with longitudinal fire location inside the branch tunnel. Lastly, modified models are established for estimating the longitudinal profile of temperatures downstream of the main tunnel and branch tunnel, where the influence of the rate of ventilation and location of the fire are taken into account.