Tunnel Fire Suppression Tests with Water Mist Fire

Extinguishing System Containing an Additive

1st Mingqiang Yan 2nd Zejiang Zhang 3rd Wei Liu
Sichuan fire research institude of MEM Sichuan fire research institude of MEM Sichuan fire research institude of MEM
Chengdu, China Chengdu, China Chengdu, China
yanmingqiang@scfri.cn zhangzejiang@scfri.cn liuwei@scfri.cn
(corresponding author)

4th Yaqiang Jiang 5th Pingli Li 6th Meng Yang

Sichuan fire research institude of MEM Sichuan fire research institude of MEM Vita long fire safety group co. LTD
Chengdu, China Chengdu, China Chengdu, China
jiangyaqiang@scfri.cn lipingli@scfri.cn

Abstract—Due to the advantages of no pollution, rapid fire
suppression, less water consumption, lower cost, and little
damage to the object, water mist fire extinguishing system has
been widely used in road tunnels. In order to improve the fire
extinguishing performance of water mist fire extinguishing
system, a water based extinguishing agent was used as additive
and injected into the water mist fire extinguishing system at
the proportion of 3%. The tunnel fire suppression tests
were carried out, and the fire extinguishing performance of
water mist fire extinguishing system under different
longitudinal ventilation velocity and with and without additive
were compared and analyzed. The results show that high
pressure water mist system has good cooling and heat radiation
blocking effect, and has good fire control and extinguishing
effect for tunnel oil fire;the suitable additive can effectively
improve the fire control and extinguishing effect of water mist
extinguishing system used in road tunnel.
suppression effect on road tunnel fire. And through these
tests the researchers come up with some guidelines such as
UPTUN Report D251 - Engineering Guidance for Water
Based Fire Fighting Systems for the Protection of Tunnels
and Sub Surface Facilities[6], SOLIT2 (Safety of Life in
Tunnels) - Engineering Guidance for a Comprehensive
Evaluation of Tunnels with Fixed Fire Fighting Systems[7],
PIARC Report 2016R03EN - Fixed fire fighting systems in
road tunnels: Current practices and recommendations[8].As a
result, water mist fire extinguishing system is widely used in
road tunnel.
18000 Road tunnel
Long tunnel
16000 Extra-long tunnel
14000

Keywords—tunnel, fire tests, water mist, additive,oil pan fire 12000

Number

10000
I. INTRODUCTION
8000
According to statistics released by the Ministry of
Transport of the People's Republic of China, the number of 6000

road tunnels in China is increasing year by year (see fig. 4000

1).By the end of 2018, China had 17,738 road tunnels with a
total length of 17,236,100 meters, 1,058 extra-long tunnels
with a total length of 4,706,600 meters and 4,315 long
tunnels with a total length of 7,421,800 meters. And with the
large-scale construction and using of tunnels, the risk
probability of fire is increasing. In recent years, many major
road tunnel fire accidents had occurred at home and abroad,
causing heavy casualties, huge economic losses and
extremely serious social impact. For example, the tunnel bus
fire happened in a tunnel in Wuxi, Jiangsu province on July 4,
2010, leaving 24 dead and 19 others injured.
Therefore, fire facilities should be reasonably set up
according to the characteristics of tunnel.At home and
abroad, fire characteristics, fire prevention and fire
extinguishing tests of tunnels have been carried out, and
relevant technical requirements and standards such as NFPA
502[1], GB 50016[2]have been formulated.
Water mist fire extinguishing system has the advantages
of no pollution, rapid fire suppression, less water
consumption, lower cost, and little damage to the protected
object. Therefore, the application of water mist fire
extinguishing system in road tunnel has received extensive
attention and research.There have many water mist fire
extinguishing system tests been conducted in full-scale or
large-scale tunnels[3-5].These tests have proved that the
water mist fire extinguishing system has good control and
2000
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Year
Fig.1. The development of road tunnel in China
Water mist containing an additive is considered as
the one of the most front hot issue in the research field
of Fire Science. According to the definition given in SOLIT2
guidelines[7], the additives are defined as chemical or
mixture of chemicals intentionally introduced into the system
e.g. for improving fire fighting performance or thermal
resistance. However, most of the above mentioned tests and
applications in road tunnel do not consider the impact of
additives. In this paper, a water based extinguishing agent
was used as additive to pump into the tunnel water mist
system to improve the fire extinguishing performance of the
system. For different longitudinal ventilation velocity and
with and without additive, the temperature, thermal radiation
and fire suppression time were analyzed.
II. EXPERIMENT DESIGN
A .Test Tunnel

XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE

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 The length, height and width of the test tunnel are 140m,
5.05m and 5.90m respectively. A fire test interval is set in
the tunnel with a length of about 30m. The diagram of the
cross section and vertical section of the test tunnel are as
shown in Fig.2 and Fig.3 respectively.

Fig.4. Diagram of the test system

(a) (b)

Fig.2. Diagram of the cross section of test tunnel

Fig.3. Diagram of the vertical section of test tunnel
B.Test System
The test system consists of water mist system, automatic
injection device , fan, data acquisition system and
additive(see Fig.4). Water mist fire extinguishing system
consists of water tank, pump, pipe network and nozzles. The
layout parameters of water mist system are as follows: the
working pressure of the pump is 15MPa, the spacing of
nozzle is 4m, the working pressure at nozzle is 10MPa, the
flow coefficient of nozzle is 1.7L∙min-1∙MPa-1/2. The
automatic injection device is composed of additive storage
box, injection pump and flow meter, and its rated working
pressure is 17MPa. The additives are injected into the main
pipe of the water mist system at a set proportion through
high-pressure pump of the automatic injection device.Using
the fan the wind speed at 2.5m above the fire source can vary
within a range of 0-3m/s. The test system is mainly
composed of temperature data acquisition system, wind
speed acquisition system, thermal radiation meter, video
monitoring system and so on. Specific measuring points are
arranged as shown in figure 5. The additive used in the tests
is a water based extinguishing agent in accordance with the
requirements of national standard “Water based
extinguishing agent”(GB17835).
(c)
Fig.5. Diagram of measuring-point arrangement(a-temperature metrical
points of section 00, b-temperature metrical points of section U10 and D10,
c-heat flux metrical point of section D20)
C. Test Conditions
In this paper, diesel oil pool fire was chosen as fire
source. The heat release rate of the fire source is about 3MW.
The oil pan is a square one with a size of
1500mm×1500mm×200mm. Before each test, we poured
some water and 0# diesel oil into the oil pan. The volume of
diesel oil is 25L. And the oil pan is in the center of the tunnel.
After all the conditions being ready, the diesel oil was ignited
by some n-heptane. For the diesel oil pool fire, a 2min of
pre-burn was allowed to reach steady burning conditions.
Then the water mist system was activated by manual control .
The fire extinguishing time was memorized by stopwatch
and video camera. It is considered to be successful if the
flame is not rekindled within 1 minute after extinguished and
the diesel oil can be ignited again.The test conditions are
shown in TABLE I.
TABLE I. TEST CONDITIONS
Test Additive(%) Ventilation velocity(m/s)
1 without 0
2 3 0
3 3 1.5
4 3 3

III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULT

A.Effect of High Pressure Water Mist Extinguishing System
without Additives on Tunnel Oil Pan Fire

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 As shown in Fig.6 and Fig.7, after the 3MW diesel oil longitudinal wind, the flame at the fire source is offset and
pan is ignited, the heat flux measured at 20m downstream of carries some heat away. Therefore, the temperature and
the fire source gradually increases and remains basically thermal radiation intensity of the fire source area and the
stable at the peak for a period of time within the downstream of the fire source have a very obvious decline
precombustion time of up to 2min. It can be seen that the oil under the wind condition, and the decline range is larger with
pool has reached the state of full combustion.In the basically the increase of the wind speed.
windless state, the smoke generated by combustion spreads 1000
Origin

to the upper and lower reaches of the fire source, resulting in

140 Upstream 5m 5m
4m 4m
120 3m 800 3m

an increase of air temperature under the tunnel roof. The

2m 2m
1m
100
600

Temperature ( C)

Temperature ( C)
highest temperature of the smoke above the fire source is

o
80
400

892.8℃, 409℃, and 137.2℃ and 120.5℃ respectively.

60

40 200

After the start of the fine water mist system, the visibility of 20
0

the test area decreases rapidly, the temperature of the fire 0

0 100 200 300
Time (s)
400 500 600 0 100 200 300
Time (s)
400 500 600

source area and the upstream and downstream of the fire

source decreases rapidly, and the heat flux measured in the (a) (b)
downstream of the fire source also decreases rapidly, and the Ventilation velocity 0m/s q

fire source is extinguished after about 350s of system 120 Downstream 5m 400
4m
3m

operation. It can be seen that the tunnel high-pressure fine

100
2m
300
1m

Temperature ( C)
80

water mist system has a good cooling and heat radiation

q (W/m )
2
200
60

blocking effect, and has a good fire control and extinguishing 40 100

effect for oil fire. 20

0

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 100 200 300 400 500
1000
Origin Time (s) T (s)
140 Upstream 5m 5m
4m 4m
120 3m
2m
1m
800 3m
2m (c) (d)
100
600
Temperature ( C)

Temperature ( C)

Fig.8. The variation of temperature and thermal radiation of Test2

o

80
400
60

40 200

20
140 Upstream 180 Origin
0 5m 5m
0 4m 160 4m
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 120 3m 3m
2m 140 2m
Time (s) Time (s)
100 1m
120
Temperature ( C)

Temperature ( C)
(a) (b)
o

o
80 100

80
60

60
40
120 Downstream 5m 400
qr 40
4m 20
3m 20
100
2m
300 0 0
1m
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 100 200 300 400 500 600
Temperature ( C)

80
Time (s) Time (s)
o

qr(W/m )
2

200
60

40 100 (a) (b)

20
0 200
150
Ventilation velocity 1.5m/s q
0 140 Downstream 5m
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 100 200 300 400 130 4m
Time (s) t(s) 120 3m 150

110 2m
1m
(c) (d)
100
Temperature ( C)

90 100
o

q (W/m )

80
2

70

Fig.6. The variation of temperature and thermal radiation of Test1(a- 60

50
50

temperature of section U10, b- temperature of section 00, c-temperature of 40

30 0

section D10, d-heat flux of section D20)

20
10
0 -50
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700

Time (s) T (s)

(c) (d)
Fig.9. The variation of temperature and thermal radiation of Test3

140
Upstream 5m Origin 5m
4m 120 4m
40 3m 3m
2m 2m
1m 100
Temperature ( C)

Temperature ( C)
o

80

60
20

40

20

0 0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
Time (s) Time (s)

Fig.7. The test process pictures of Test1 (a) (b)

90 200

B.Effect of High Pressure Water Mist Extinguishing System Downstream 5m Ventilation velocity 3.0m/s q
80 4m
150
3m

with Additives on Tunnel Oil Pan Fire

70 2m
1m
60 100
Temperature ( C)
o

50

Fig.8 to Fig.10 shows the variation of temperature and

q (W/m )
2

50
40

thermal radiation in the process of water mist extinguishing 30 0

20

test with additives at different wind speeds.It can be seen that,

-50
10

0 -100

due to the presence of longitudinal wind, the flue gas mainly 0 100 200 300
Time (s)
400 500 600 700 0 100 200
T (s)
300 400 500

spreads to the downstream of the fire source. When the wind

speed is 1.5m/s or 3m/s, almost no flue gas spreads to 10m (c) (d)
Fig.10. The variation of temperature and thermal radiation of Test4
upstream of the fire source, so the temperature of the section
there hardly changes.In addition, because of the presence of

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 TABLE II shows the effect of the water mist system with No.2016YFC0800604), Scientific Research Program of Fire
3% additives at different wind speeds. It can be seen that Department of MEM(No.2018XFGG19) and Basic Scientific
compared with the water mist system without additives, the Research of Sichuan Fire Research Institute of
water mist system with additives has better fire extinguishing MEM(No.20188802Z). We deeply appreciate it. The authors
effect. Even in windy conditions, the water mist additive can greatly appreciate the comments from the reviewers.
play a good role.This is mainly because of the use of
additives for water system fire extinguishing agent, has a REFERENCES
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This work was supported by National Key R&D
Program of China(No.2018YFC0807600,No.2018YF and

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