A DETAILED CFD SIMULATION OF THE 2003 DAEGU METRO STATION FIRE

Abstract

The Daegu metro station fire on 18 February 2003 was a tragic accident that claimed 192 lives in South Korea. The fire was set by an arsonist in a stopped train at the Daegu metro station, and spread to another train arriving at the station on the opposite track. The present numerical study aims to reproduce the Daegu metro station fire using a transient 3-D CFD simulation with detailed geometry of the station and tunnels in order to understand the behavior of the smoke and heat responsible for human losses in such accidents. The actual motion of the arriving train was also considered by using a moving mesh technique, and the fire development and CO gas generation were modeled with the enthalpy and scalar source terms. The evolutions of the temperature and CO gas distributions in the station were obtained in detail from the present simulation. The heat and CO concentrations at some critical locations (such as staircases) were shown and discussed in detail. The results of the present numerical study could provide useful data for future emergency plans of metro stations in case of fire.