Proceedings of the World Tunnel Congress 2014 – Tunnels for a better Life. Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil.

Numerical estimations of heat release from a railcar fire based on

varying ventilation speed
W.-H. Park
Korea Railroad Research Institute, Uiwang-si, Republic of Korea.
H. B. Kim and C. H. Lee
JSC Solution, Inc., Uiwang-si, Republic of Korea.
D. H. Lee and W. S. Jung
Korea Railroad Research Institute, Uiwang-si, Republic of Korea.
S. J. Yang
Hyundai Rotem, Uiwang-si, Republic of Korea.

ABSTRACT: To design the ventilation system of a railway tunnel that can handle fire emergencies,
the energy released from a railcar fire has to be considered. The maximum heat release rate is
particularly important. Traditionally, the Kennedy equation is used to calculate the critical velocity of
tunnel fire, which is the minimum ventilation speed required to control smoke and heat originating
from the railcar fire. However, in a confined fire such as a tunnel fire, the maximum heat release rate
varies with the tunnel ventilation speed. In this study, the heat release rates from a passenger railcar
in a tunnel were obtained for different tunnel ventilation velocities using the computation fluid
dynamics model, Fire Dynamics Simulator, developed by the NIST. The properties of the interior
materials of the railcar were obtained from bench-scale tests and literature. Among these properties,
the effective heat of combustion and reaction velocity constants were obtained by carrying out cone
calorimeter and thermogravimetric analysis.

1 INTRODUCTION fire propagation in the railcar. For the modeling

One of the factors to be considered while
designing the ventilation system of a railway
tunnel is whether the system can effectively
control smoke flow originating from train fires.
One design factor is the fire size in railcars.
Therefore, the Korea Railroad Research Institute
(KRRI) carried out full-size fire tests at the
NRC in collaboration with Carlton University
(Hadjisophocleous et al., 2012). Fire sizes in
railcars determined on the basis of these test
results have been published in the “Guideline
for assessment of fire safety in railway tunnels”
(KRRI, 2009). However, Roh et al. (2007)
conducted reduced-scale tests that demonstrated
that the airflow velocity in a tunnel affects the
fire sizes of pool pans. In this study, the heat
release rates from a passenger railcar fire in a
tunnel were computed for different tunnel
ventilation velocities using the computation
fluid dynamics model, Fire Dynamics Simulator
(FDS, Version 5) (McGrattan et al., 2010). Fire
can grow when there is the sufficient oxidant,
sufficient external heat and the objects which
burns. The ventilation in tunnel may be effected
1
of fire behavior on the solid, interior materials
of the rail car, the pyrolysis model is adopted
and the input data for the pyrolysis model are
the properties of the interior materials of the rail
car. The rate of the pyrolysis, fire propagation is
dependent by the material properties. The
properties of the interior materials of the railcar
were obtained from bench-scale tests and
literature. Among these properties, the effective
heat of combustion and reaction velocity
constants were obtained by carrying out cone
calorimeter and thermogravimetric analysis.
2 CONSIDERED TUNNEL AND RAILCAR
2.1 Single-track tunnel
The tunnel considered in this study has a single
track, and the length, width, and height of the
tunnel are 39.6, 4.4, and 5 m, respectively. For
the boundary condition for numerical analysis
all tunnel are assumed the adiabatic walls.
 Proceedings of the World Tunnel Congress 2014 – Tunnels for a better Life. Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil.

2.2 Intercity car (Saemaul-ho)

Figure 1. Schematic of intercity railcar
Table 1. Interior materials of intercity railcar
The railcar is an intercity railcar called
Saemaul-ho in Korea. The railcar length, width,
and height are 23, 3, and 3.4 m, respectively. A
schematic of the intercity railcar is shown in
Figure 1. The railcar has 64 seats, with 17 rows
of 4 seats each arranged at an equal distance
from each other.
The interior materials of the intercity railcar
are polyester fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) for
the wall, PVC for the floor, glass fiber for
insulation, urethane foam for seats, and
polyester fiber for seat covers. The details of the
materials are listed in Table 1.

Interiors Material
3 NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
Wall panel FRP

PE foam The fire development characteristics and fire

size in the intercity railcar for different
Ceiling panel MPAL ventilation speeds in the tunnel are obtained by
FDS Version 5. FDS considers Navier-Stokes
Coving and Lack MPAL
equations as hydrodynamic models, and these
Floor Center PVC equations are solved by large eddy simulation
calculations using a Smagorinsky model
adhesive (Smagorinsky, 1963). Temperature fields are
obtained by solving the energy equations of
plywood
radiative transfer. The finite volume method is
PE foam also adopted for radiative transfer equations.
One-dimensional energy equations for pyrolysis
Floor side PVC in solids are simultaneously solved. The
pyrolysis rates are functions of local mass
adhesive
concentration and temperature, and calculated as
plywood a combination of Arrhenius and power
functions:
PE foam
 E  n
Partition MPAL m=Aexp    max  0, T  Tign  (1)
 RT 
Seat base PE moquette

PU foam m is the pyrolysis rate and pyrolysis rate is

decided by parameter A, E and n. These values
Seat back PE moquette are properties for the materials of the interiors in
the rail car. Combustible gases originating from
PU foam a solid via pyrolysis react in the gaseous phase,
Foot rest ABS plastic and combustion in the gaseous phase is
analyzed using a two-parameter mixture fraction
Seat arm Integral skin foam combustion model. All equations are discretized
in an orthogonal coordinate system, and finally,
Seat back panel ABS plastic unsteady properties are obtained in FDS.
Seat side cover ABS plastic Figure 2 shows the computational domain
and railcar. The railcar structure is 0.9 m above
Seat leg rest PE moquette the tunnel ground because the bogie is located
below the railcar. The velocity inlet for the
PU foam ventilation flow is at the right end, which is
2
 Proceedings of the World Tunnel Congress 2014 – Tunnels for a better Life. Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil.
Figure 2. Computational domain and divided zone for parallel processing
open to the atmosphere. All walls are assumed
to be adiabatic. The right end of the railcar is
located 2.8 m from the right end of the tunnel.
The railcar is located near the inlet because
combustible gases formed by pyrolysis of the
interior materials of the railcar can react under
the tunnel ventilation within the computational
domain. If any portion of the combustible gas is
not burned in the computational domain and
escapes through the open left end of the tunnel,
the fire size in the railcar is considered to be
underestimated.
The tunnel is divided into 8 equidistant
sections, and parallel processing is employed
using a computer having 8 CPU nodes, a Xeon
2.27 GHz processor, and 24 GB memory. The
number of total grids is approximately 7
million, and the length of each grid is 0.05 m.
The door destruction temperature is set to
600°C. The ignition source fire scenario
followed the predetermined fire curve
(EN45545-1, 2013), as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Heat release rate of fire source
To obtain the fire curve using the thermal
pyrolysis model, the effective heat of
combustion from the interior materials and the
3
physical values are necessary. Test equipment
such as a thermogravimetric analyzer and
differential scanning calorimeter were used to
obtain the physical values for each material. The
fire curve was predicted by applying the thermal
decomposition model to the same scenario and
fire source. Although the thermal pyrolysis
model follows a very microscopic approach and
consequently offers microscopic rigor, its
disadvantage is that microscopic error (if any) is
accumulated. The ventilation speeds considered
in this study are 0, 1, and 2.5 m/s. The minimum
ventilation speed of subway tunnels in Korea is
2.5 m/s. Figures 4–6 show pictures of the railcar
on fire at maximum heat release rates for
different tunnel ventilation speeds. The heat
release rates for different tunnel ventilation
speeds are shown in Figure 7. The maximum
heat release rates from the railcar on fire are
24.2, 35.3, and 51.9 MW for ventilation speeds
of 0, 1, and 2.5 m/s, respectively. The maximum
heat release rate for a tunnel ventilation speed of
2.5 m/s is over 2 times that for a tunnel with no
ventilation. Hence, the tunnel ventilation speed
is one of the most important factors in deciding
the fire size in railcars during the design of
tunnel ventilation.
Figure 4. Fire propagation at maximum fire size
(no ventilation)
 Proceedings of the World Tunnel Congress 2014 – Tunnels for a better Life. Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil.
Figure 5. Fire propagation at maximum fire size
( 1 m/s ventilation speed)
Figure 6. Fire propagation at maximum fire size
( 2.5 m/s ventilation speed)
Figure 7. Heat release rates for different
tunnel ventilation speeds
4 CONCLUSION
In this study, the heat release rates from a
passenger railcar fire in a tunnel were obtained
for different tunnel velocities using the
computation fluid dynamics model, FDS,
developed by the NIST. The properties of the
interior materials of the railcar were obtained
from bench-scale tests and literature. Among
4
these properties, the effective heat of
combustion and reaction velocity constants were
obtained by carrying out cone calorimeter and
thermogravimetric analysis. The more
ventilation speed, the faster fire propagation.
The time of the windows of the railcar is shorten
with large ventilations. The heat release rates
for large ventilation speed are going up fast and
the maximum heat release rate is larger than
with no/smaller ventilation. So the fire
phenomena of the railcar in the tunnel is under-
ventilation which means the fire propagation is
mainly governed by oxygen, i.e. the tunnel
ventilation speeds. The maximum heat release
rate for a tunnel ventilation speed of 2.5 m/s is
over 2 times that for a tunnel with no
ventilation. Hence, the tunnel ventilation speed
is one of the most important factors in deciding
the fire size in railcars during the design of
tunnel ventilation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was carried out within a project,
by the Korea Ministry of Land, Infrastructure
and Transport and Korea Agency for
Infrastructure Technology Advancement. These
supports are gratefully acknowledged..
REFERENCES
EN 45545-1; 2013. Railway applications - Fire protection
on railway vehicles - Part 1: General.
KRRI: 2009. Guideline for assessment of fire safety in
railway tunnels.
Hadjisophocleous, G.; Lee D.H. and Park W.-H. 2012.
Full-scale Experiments for Heat Release Rate
Measurements of Railcar Fires. In: The 5th
International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and
Security. New York; SP.
McGrattan, K; McDermott, R.; Hostikka, S.; Floyd, J.
2010. Fire Dynamics Simulator (Version 5) User’s
Guide. NIST.
Roh. J.S.; Ryou, H.S.; Kim D.H.; Jung W.S. and Jang
Y. J. 2007. Critical velocity and burning rate in pool
fire during longitudinal ventilation, Tunnelling and
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