Study on the Temperature and Smoke Movement in the Event of a Fire in a Semiclosed Tunnel under Water Spray

Abstract

Semiclosed tunnels are very common in engineering construction. They are not connected, so they easily accumulate heat. Once a fire breaks out in a semiclosed tunnel, the route for rescue workers to enter is limited, so it is tough to get close to the fire source. In this paper, taking a mine excavation roadway with local pressure ventilation as an example, the temperature field distribution and water spray fire prevention characteristics of the excavation roadway face were studied using numerical simulation and theoretical analysis. This paper provides an explanation of a dynamics-based smoke management method for water spraying in a semiclosed tunnel as well as the equilibrium relationship between droplet drag force and smoke buoyancy. A method was first developed to calculate the quantity of smoke blockage based on the thickness of the smoke congestion. The local ventilation and smoke movement created a circulating flow in the excavation face, which was discovered by investigating the velocity and temperature fields of the excavation face. The size of the high-temperature area and the pattern of temperature stratification varied due to this circulating flow. When local ventilation and sprinkler systems were operating simultaneously, when the volume of smoke was small, the smoke avoided the majority of the water spray effect with the circulation flow; however, when the volume of smoke was large, the effect of the circulation flow decreased and the smoke gathered close to the sprinkler head. At this time, the blocking effect of the water spray was significant. The mean square error analysis revealed that activating the sprinkler had the most significant cooling impact on the wall on one side of the air duct.