Applied Thermal Engineering 106 (2016) 1094–1102

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Research Paper

Influence of aspect ratio of tunnel on smoke temperature distribution

under ceiling in near field of fire source
Jie Ji a,b, Yubo Bi a, Kondapalli Venkatasubbaiah c, Kaiyuan Li d,⇑
a
State Key Laboratory of Fire Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China
b
Institute of Advanced Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230088, China
c
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Hyderabad 502205, India
d
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, Aalto University, 02150 Espoo, Finland

h i g h l i g h t s

Experiments were conducted using a model tunnel with adjustable width.

The effect of tunnel width on mass loss rate is studied.

Correlations for predicting the ceiling temperature distributions are proposed.

The proposed correlations are compared with literature and show a good agreement.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Former studies usually used model tunnels with fixed width while in reality the tunnel width can be
Received 15 December 2015 different between different tunnels. In the current study, a set of small scale experiments were conducted
Revised 13 June 2016 using a model tunnel with adjustable width. The influences of tunnel width on mass loss rate, maximum
Accepted 14 June 2016
smoke temperature and temperature distributions under the ceiling were investigated. Results show that
Available online 16 June 2016
under the current experimental conditions, the tunnel width has little influence on the mass loss rate and
maximum smoke temperature under the ceiling. However, tunnel width significantly affects the smoke
Keywords:
temperature distribution. The smoke temperature under the ceiling decays more slowly at both
Tunnel fire
Tunnel width
longitudinal and transverse directions as tunnel width decreases. Empirical models are developed for both
Mass loss rate longitudinal and transverse temperature distributions which take into account the effects of tunnel width
Smoke temperature and dimensionless heat release rate. The models include exponential type functions. The index of the
Pool fire exponential function is proportional to the dimensionless heat release rate to the power of n. The value
of n is 0.4 for longitudinal distribution and 0.5 for transverse distribution.
Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In recent years, significant amount of researches were carried out
in model or real tunnels with fixed height and width and thus fixed
aspect ratio, where the aspect ratio is height/width for a tunnel with
rectangular cross section. These researches covered many important
factors in tunnel fires, such as mass loss rate [1,2], maximum smoke
temperature [3–7] and longitudinal temperature distribution
[8–11]. As these factors are important parameters providing guid-
ance for fire detection, evacuation and even protection of tunnel
structure. However, in reality, the tunnel width can be very different
between tunnels, leading to different effects on fire development.
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: kaiyuan.li@aalto.fi (K. Li).
For tunnels with certain height, the distance between fire source
and sidewalls decreases with tunnel width. As a result, the sidewalls
will affect the air entrainment and radiation feedback, which will
influence the fire development. The influence of sidewall on air
entrainment and radiation feedback is especially strong and notice-
able when the fire source is placed against the sidewall [3,4,12–14].
Gao et al. [3,4,12] investigated the sidewall effect on the ceiling jet
temperature and flame behavior for fires with different distances
to sidewall in a model tunnel with an aspect ratio of 0.5. It is found
that the maximum ceiling temperature increased significantly when
the fire was placed against sidewall. Moreover, the flame length
from fire against the sidewall of tunnel was higher than the one in
open space due to the restriction of air entrainment. Ji et al.
[13,14] studied the influence of sidewall effect on flame characteris-
tics and burning rate using a series of experiments with heptane pool

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2016.06.086
1359-4311/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 J. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 106 (2016) 1094–1102
Nomenclature
cp specific heat of ambient air (kJ kg1 K1)

d characteristic tunnel hydraulic diameter (m)
dl longitudinal distance from the fire source (m)
dref distance of reference position from fire source (m)
dt transverse distance from the fire source (m)
g gravity acceleration (m s2)
H tunnel height (m)
H hydraulic diameter of the tunnel (m)
Hef effective ceiling height (m)
L tunnel length (m)
m_ 00 mass loss rate per unit area (g m2 s1)
n power of Q_ 
Q_ heat release rate (kW)
Q_ 0 dimensionless heat release rate in Eq. (8)
Q_  dimensionless heat release rate in Eq. (9)
Ta ambient temperature (K)
fires in two model tunnels with aspect ratios of 0.43 and 0.5. They
found that the burning rate increased as the effective ceiling height
decreased due to the enhanced radiation heat feedback from the
ceiling and ceiling jet flame, especially for fires against the sidewall.
Nevertheless, these studies ignored the influence of tunnel width
and the fire was only affected by only one sidewall. For relatively
narrow tunnels, the fire might be restricted by both sidewalls of
which the influence could be different from the above studies.
However, little study has been carried out on the effect of aspect
ratio. Lee and Ryou [15] indicated that no demonstrated correlations
that could correlate the temperature distribution of the fire-induced
flow along the ceiling of tunnels (or corridors) with various
cross-section aspect ratios. Based on numerical study, Li et al. [16]
developed a simple correlation for temperature distribution along
tunnels with different aspect ratios. Their results need to be
validated experimentally.
It can be seen from the literature review that fire characteristics
in tunnels are influenced by ceiling, sidewalls and aspect ratio of
tunnels. The change of tunnel width may affect the air entrainment
and heat feedback to the fire source. Hence, systematic study on
the effect of tunnel width is worthwhile. In the current study, a
set of small-scale experiments were carried out to study the effect
of tunnel width on mass loss rate, maximum temperature and
ceiling jet temperature distributions in both longitudinal and
transverse directions.
2. Experimental setup
Fig. 1 shows the small-scale model tunnel. The tunnel is 2.0 m
long (L), 0.5 m high (H) with an adjustable width (w) where
w = 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0 m. Then the aspect ratio of tunnel height to
width ranges from 0.5 to 1.25. The ceiling, floor and one sidewall
are made of 4 mm thick steel plate with 30 mm thick fire-
resistant board as the inner lining. The other movable sidewall is
made of 8 mm thick fire-resistant glass for observation. Methanol
pool fires were used as fire sources. The fuel pans were placed at
the center of the tunnel. There were 5 square pans with side lengths
of 0.075, 0.10, 0.15, 0.20, 0.25 m while their heights are identical of
20 mm. All pans were made of 2 mm thick steel plates. The fuel
depth in each experiment was set as 10 mm before ignition. The
effective ceiling height, Hef, was defined as the distance between
pan bottom and ceiling which was 0.45 m in each experiment. The
ambient temperature recorded by a mercury thermometer ranged
from 291 K to 295 K. The fuel mass versus time was recorded using
a CPA34001S balance with an accuracy of 0.1 g. The heat release rate
1095
DT max maximum smoke temperature rise under the ceiling (K)
DT max;dl maximum temperature rise at a longitudinal distance of
dl from the fire source (K)
DT max;dref reference smoke temperature rise (K)
DT max;dt maximum temperature rise at a transverse distance of
dt from the fire source (K)
w tunnel width (m)
wf width of the methanol pool (m)
Greek symbols
g heat release enhancement coefficient
qa density of ambient air (kg m3)
u aspect ratio of the tunnel
Q_ can be calculated from the mass loss rate at the steady state with
the heat of combustion of methanol of 20 MJ/kg [17]. Two digital
cameras with a spatial resolution of 1920  1080 and a frame rate
of 25 fps were used to record the experimental process from two
sides of the apparatus, as shown in Fig. 1. The ceiling temperatures
were measured using K-type thermocouples with a diameter of
1 mm and a response time less than 1 s. As shown in Fig. 1 and 30
thermocouples were installed 15 mm beneath the ceiling with the
transverse distances from the sidewall of 0.01 m, 0.1 m, 0.2 m,
0.3 m, 0.4 m and 0.5 m, respectively, and the interval at the longitu-
dinal direction was 0.2 m. Typical cases were repeated two times
and the outcomes showed good repeatability. A summary of the
experimental conditions is presented in Table 1.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Mass loss rate
The average mass loss rates per unit area (m _ 00 ) at the steady state
are shown in Fig. 2. It can be seen that m _ 00 differs very little with the
tunnel width. The values of m _ 00 in cases with side lengths from 0.075
to 0.25 m are approximately 20 g/(m2 s) at all tunnel widths,
indicating that the mass loss rate per unit area of methanol pool fire
is little affected by the tunnel width under the current experimental
conditions. This can be explained with the help of the study
conducted by Carvel et al. [18]. Based on the literature data, they
investigated the impact of tunnel width on the heat release
enhancement coefficient (denoted as g), which is the ratio of heat
release rates of fires in a tunnel and in the open. They concluded that
for methanol pool fires, g changes insignificantly when the width of
the fire over tunnel width wf/w is smaller than 0.7. In our work the
maximum value of wf/w was 0.625. Using the conclusion from Car-
vel et al. to the present study, g is therefore a constant at a given wf/
w. That is to say, at a given pool size, the mass loss rates of the
methanol fires in a tunnel will maintain constant without being
affected by the tunnel width. So the current tunnel widths are large
enough for the pool fire and the radiation heat feedbacks from the
sidewalls are ignorable. The experimental results are also compared
to the experimental results in Refs. [17,19], as shown in Fig. 2. In
open space, as the methanol pool fires with pool diameter higher
than 20 cm, the mass loss rates per unit area was experimentally
determined as a constant at 17 g/(m2 s) [17]. This value is slightly
lower than the current study as caused by the heat feedback from
the ceiling. It can also be seen in Fig. 2 that the data of m _ 00 for
1096 J. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 106 (2016) 1094–1102

(a) Solid diagram Longitudinal 7KHUPRFRXSOHV

Thermocouples
rse
nsve
Tra

Camera
&DPHUD1 H+ = 0.5

Pan
wZ = 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0
Camera 2
&DPHUD L /= 2.0
)LUHUHVLVWDQWJODVV
Fire-resistant glass Electronic
(OHFWURQLF
EDODQFH
balance Pan length = 0.075, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2, 0.25

(b) Top view

dt
Longitudinal centerline
dl
Transverse centerline (unit: m)

Fig. 1. Schematic of experimental apparatus.

Table 1 700
Experimental conditions.
Experimental data
Pan size (m  m) Tunnel width (m) 600 w = 1.0 m
w = 0.8 m
0.075  0.075 1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4
0.10  0.10 1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4
500 w = 0.6 m
0.15  0.15 1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4 w = 0.4 m
0.20  0.20 1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4 400 Eq. (3)
0.25  0.25 1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4
Δ Tmax

300

200 Literature data

25
Gao et al. [3]
100 Tunnel A [20]
Mass loss rate per unit area (g/m s)

Tunnel B [20]
2

20 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
2/3 5/3
Q /H
ef
15
Experimental data Fig. 3. Experimental maximum smoke temperature rise and comparison with data
w = 1.0 m w = 0.8 m in literature.

w = 0.6 m w = 0.4 m
10
Literature data
thermocouples positioned right above the fire source. Fig. 3 shows
Karlsson and Quintiere [17]
the maximum temperature rises under the ceiling in all tests with
Liu [19]
various tunnel widths and pan sizes. It can be observed that the
5 maximum smoke temperature rise varies little with the tunnel
0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25
width at a given pan size and tunnel height, indicating that the
Side length of pan (m) tunnel width has a weak impact on the maximum smoke
Fig. 2. Mass loss rates per unit area of pans with different tunnel widths.
temperature under the ceiling. This is because the mass loss rate
changes little with the tunnel width. As the combustion efficiency
of methanol is close to unity [17], the total energy released by
methanol pool fires in a no wind tunnel from Liu [19] is comparable methanol pool changes little with the tunnel width. As a result,
to the current study, which implies the current results are the maximum smoke temperature changes insignificantly as the
reasonable. tunnel width varies.
Li et al. [20] carried out two sets of small-scale experiments
using two model tunnels. They developed an expression to predict
3.2. Maximum smoke temperature under the ceiling the maximum smoke temperature. When the flame did not reach
the ceiling, the maximum temperature rise can be expressed as
In the experiments, the flames generated by the pool fires with
pan side lengths of 0.075 m and 0.10 m cannot reach the ceiling Q_ 3
2

while those from pan side lengths of 0.15 m, 0.20 m and 0.25 m DT max ¼ 17:5 5
ð1Þ
can reach the ceiling intermittently. Li et al. [20] found that the H3ef
location of maximum ceiling gas temperature is right above
the center of fire source under natural ventilation. Therefore, where DT max is the maximum smoke temperature rise under the
the maximum temperature can be determined using the ceiling, Q_ is the heat release rate, Hef is the effective ceiling height.
 J. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 106 (2016) 1094–1102 1097

Ji et al. [8] experimentally studied the impact of transverse fire
location on maximum smoke temperature under the tunnel ceiling.
They also developed an equation to predict the maximum smoke
temperature with fires located at the longitudinal centerline:
Q_ 3
2
away from the tunnel sidewall rather than at the longitudinal
centerline of tunnel. Although Ingason and Li [11] compared their
results to other researches with different aspect ratios, yet the
tunnel width was not involved in Eq. (5). Since no correlation
was proposed by Li et al. [16] to predict the temperature rise at

DT max ¼ 17:9 5 ð2Þ the reference position DT max;dref , the applicability of Eq. (6) is very
H3ef limited.
In the current study, the longitudinal smoke temperature rises
The above studies indicate that the maximum smoke tempera-
2
are measured using thermocouples along the longitudinal center-
Q_ 3
ture is proportional to 5 . Similarly, the correlation between DT max line. Taking the 0.15 m pan as an example, Fig. 4(a) shows the
H3 DT max;d
ef
2
dimensionless maximum smoke temperature rise DT max
l
against
Q_ 3
and 5 can be obtained by linearly fitting the experimental results the dimensionless distance from the fire source dl
in order to obtain
H3 H
ef
DT max;d
shown in Fig. 3. the temperature decay rate. It can be seen that DT max
l
increases
As shown, the experimental results are well fitted as Eq. (3) with decreasing the tunnel width at a given The smoke temper- dl
.
H
with a correlation coefficient of 0.98: ature decreases owing to the heat losses to the tunnel ceiling and
Q_ 3 sidewalls as well as the fresh air when it travels under the ceiling.
2

DT max ¼ 18:03 5
ð3Þ For the same traveling distance, the area of smoke contacting the
H3ef ceiling becomes smaller as the tunnel width decreases. As a result,
the heat loss to the ceiling decreases with tunnel width. The heat
Then the experimental data are also compared to the data from
loss to the cool air is similar. Consequently, the longitudinal smoke
Gao et al. [3] and Li et al. [20] in Fig. 3. Gao et al. [3] conducted
temperature decays slower as the tunnel width decreases.
experiments in a reduced scale model tunnel using methanol as DT max;d dl
fuel. The maximum temperature rises with fires located at the Fig. 4(b) shows the DT max
l
against H
at a given tunnel width of
longitudinal centerline of the tunnel were presented in Fig. 3. In 0.8 m. It can be seen that as the pan size increases, the temperature
Fig. 3, the data of both Tunnel A and B are adopted from DT max;d
decay rate decreases, which indicates that DT max
l
is also affected by
Ref. [20], which shows that Eq. (3) correlates well with experimen-
the heat release rate.
tal data of this study as well as those in the literature.

3.3. Smoke temperature distribution

(a) 1.1
3.3.1. Longitudinal smoke temperature distribution under the ceiling
1.0 Longitudinal distribution
Many studies have been performed on the longitudinal smoke
temperature distribution under the tunnel ceiling [8,11,16]. When 0.9 w = 1.0 m
the fire was located at the centerline of tunnel, Ji et al. [8] proposed w = 0.8 m
0.8 w = 0.6 m
the following correlation to predict the longitudinal smoke
ΔTmax , d / ΔTmax

w = 0.4 m
temperature distribution. 0.7

DT max;dl 0.6
l

¼ 0:65edl =H þ 0:35 ð4Þ

DT max 0.5
where DT max;dl is the temperature rise at a longitudinal distance of dl
0.4
from the fire source, H is the tunnel height. Using wood crib as a fire
source, Ingason and Li [11] developed an empirical model to predict 0.3
the longitudinal smoke temperature distribution under a ventilated 0.2
tunnel ceiling, which is -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8



DT max;dl dl dl dl /H
¼ 0:57e 0:13 H þ 0:43e 0:021 H ð5Þ
DT max
(b) 1.1
In the study of Ingason and Li [11], DT max was nearly a constant
1.0 Longitudinal distribution
of 900–1000 K due to the flames hit the ceiling continuously. Li
0.075 m pan
et al. [16] developed a simple correlation and numerically studied 0.9
0.10 m pan
the longitudinal smoke temperature distribution under the ceiling
0.8 0.15 m pan
by taking the aspect ratio into consideration:
ΔTmax, d / ΔTmax

( 0.20 m pan
 0.7
DT max;dl eð0:00733ðdl dref Þ=d u P 1 ¼ H 0.25 m pan
¼ ; d ð6Þ
DT max;dref 
eð0:00406ðdl dref Þ=d u < 1 2u þ 20:3=u 0.6
l

0.5
where DT max;dref is the reference smoke temperature rise, u is the
aspect ratio of the tunnel cross section, u ¼ H=w, dref is the 0.4

reference position at which the distance from the fire source along 0.3
 is the
the ceiling is equal to the tunnel width, that is, dref ¼ w, d
0.2
characteristic tunnel hydraulic diameter. -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
It can be seen that the above correlations follow the exponential d l /H
decay trend. Note that Eqs. (4) and (5) are obtained from tunnels
with specific aspect ratios. And the measuring points of longitudi- Fig. 4. Dimensionless longitudinal temperature distributions for (a) 0.15 m pan
nal temperatures in the study of Ji et al. [8] were located at 1/4w length with various tunnel widths and (b) 5 pans under the tunnel width of 0.8 m.
1098 J. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 106 (2016) 1094–1102

Based on the Eq. (4) proposed by Ji et al. [8], the relationship of Determination of B
DT max;d dl Experimental results under each tunnel width are fitted using
DT max
l
and H
can be expressed as
Eq. (11) to come up with the values of A, B and C as listed in Table 2.
DT max;dl dl
The index coefficient, B  Q_  , is a function of tunnel width w and
0:4

¼ Ae H =B þ C ð7Þ
DT max dimensionless heat release rate Q_  . As Q_  is known, B is a function
where A, B and C are coefficients. Lee and Ryou [21] studied the of w. According to Eq. (6), B is a function of u and u1
critical velocity in ventilated tunnels by using the dimensionless w H
B ¼ C1 þ C2 ð12Þ
heat release rate parameter (Q_ 0 ) considering aspect ratio of the H w
tunnel, where Q_ 0 is defined as Both sides of Eq. (12) are multiplied by w
, Eq. (12) can be
H

Q_ 0 ¼ Q_ =ðqa cp T a g 1=2 H5=2 u1=2 Þ ð8Þ rewritten as

w w2
where qa is the density of ambient air, cp is the specific heat of B ¼ C1 þ C2 ð13Þ
H H
ambient air, T a is the ambient temperature, g is the gravity

2
acceleration, H is the hydraulic diameter of the tunnel and u is Eq. (13) indicates that B w
H
is linearly related to w
H
. The values of B
the aspect ratio of the tunnel. are from Table 2 and the results are well fitted as follows with the
From Fig. 4b, the longitudinal smoke temperature distribution related coefficient of 0.93.
under the ceiling is related to heat release rate. Referring to
w w2
Eq. (8), a new dimensionless heat release rate denoted as Q_  is B ¼ 0:361 þ 1:08 ð14Þ
H H
therefore introduced.
Therefore,
Q_  ¼ Q_ =ðqa cp T a g 1=2 H5=2 u1=2 Þ ð9Þ
w H
B ¼ 0:361 þ 1:08 ð15Þ
The phenomenon that the longitudinal temperature decay rate H w
decreases with increasing heat release rate was also observed by Determination of A and C
Fan et al. [22]. They found that the coefficient B is inversely Substituting Eq. (15) into Eq. (11) gives
proportional to n power of dimensionless heat release rate, namely,  
B ¼ f ðQ_  Þ. Shifting the term Q_  from the right to the left, a new
n n DT max;dl dl
ð0:361w H ÞQ  0:4
¼ Ae H = H
þ1:08w
þC ð16Þ
DT max
correction BQ_  is therefore introduced into Eq. (7) and it can be
n

rewritten as DT max;d
Eq. (16) indicates that the dimensionless temperature rise DT max
l
is
DT max;dl d _ n
d
 Hl =½ð0:361w H ÞQ 0:4 
þ1:08w
¼ AeH=ðBQ Þ þ C ð10Þ linearly related to the exponential term e , as plot- H

DT max ted in Fig. 6. Using the form of Eq. (16) to fit the data, the values of
However, it is hard to determine n because there is more than coefficients A and C can be obtained, as listed in Table 3. Fig. 6
one parameter changing in Eq. (10). In Oka and Kurioka’s study shows that at a given tunnel width, the scatters with various heat
[23], a series of consecutive values of n were used for fitting and release rate are concentrated, showing that coefficients A and C
the one with the highest correlation coefficient was chosen. Similar are strongly dependent on tunnel width while little affected by
method is used in the current study. The correlation coefficients the heat release rate.
with different n values are shown in Fig. 5. It is observed that the The relationship of A and w can be obtained by fitting the data
correlation coefficients are relatively high when n ranges between in Table 3. As A is a dimensionless variable, we use a dimensionless
0.4 and 0.5. Thus 0.4 is adopted as the final value of n. Then Eq. (10) tunnel width w H
for fitting. The results are well fitted linearly with a
can be converted to correlation coefficient of 0.99 as
w
DT max;dl dl _ 0:4 A ¼ 0:0893 þ 0:593 ð17Þ
¼ Ae H =ðBQ Þ þ C ð11Þ H
DT max
The dimensionless smoke temperature rise should be equal to 1
In the following parts, the values of A, B and C will be
right above the fire source where dl equals to 0 and the exponential
determined using the experimental data.
term is equal to 1, which indicates that the sum of A and C should
be equal to 1. As a result
1.0
w
C ¼ 0:0893 þ 0:407 ð18Þ
H
0.9
The longitudinal temperature distribution is finally determined
as
0.8 DT max;dl   dl  
R-square

w w H 0:4
¼ 0:0893 þ 0:593 e H = ð0:361Hþ1:08wÞQ
DT max H
 w 
0.7
w = 1.0 m þ 0:0893 þ 0:407 ð19Þ
H
w = 0.8 m
w = 0.6 m Table 2
0.6
w = 0.4 m Values of coefficients for longitudinal temperature distribution.

w A B C R2
0.5
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.0 0.774 1.30 0.227 0.989
0.8 0.733 1.18 0.263 0.993
n
0.6 0.692 1.26 0.304 0.993
0.4 0.675 1.77 0.325 0.987
Fig. 5. R-square for different n.
 J. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 106 (2016) 1094–1102 1099

1.0
1.0

0.8
0.8

ΔTmax, d / Δ Tmax
ΔTmax, d / ΔT max

0.6 0.6
0.075 m pan 0.075 m pan

l
0.10 m pan
l

0.10 m pan
0.4 0.4
0.15 m pan 0.15 m pan
0.20 m pan 0.20 m pan
0.2 0.2 0.25 m pan
0.25 m pan
Linear fit Linear fit
0.0 0.0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
*-0.4 *-0.4
exp [-dl /HQ /(0.361w/H+1.08 H/w)] exp[- d l /HQ /(0.361w /H +1.08 H /w )]
(a) w = 1.0 m (b) w = 0.8 m

1.0 1.0

0.8 0.8

ΔTmax , d / Δ T max
ΔT max, d / ΔT max

0.6 0.6
0.075 m pan 0.075 m pan
l
l

0.10 m pan 0.10 m pan

0.4 0.4
0.15 m pan 0.15 m pan
0.20 m pan 0.20 m pan
0.2 0.25 m pan 0.2 0.25 m pan
Linear fit Linear fit
0.0 0.0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
*-0.4 *-0.4
exp [- dl /HQ /(0.361w /H +1.08H /w )] exp[- dl /HQ /(0.361w /H +1.08H /w )]
(c) w = 0.6m (d) w = 0.4 m
Fig. 6. Dimensionless temperature rise versus exponential term.

Table 3
Values of A and C for longitudinal temperature distribution.
As the current w/H ranges from 0.8 to 2.0, Eq. (19) should be used
w A C R2 with special care out of this range. Fig. 7 shows the comparison of
1.0 0.771 0.232 0.99 measured longitudinal temperatures and the calculated values from
0.8 0.738 0.254 0.99 Eq. (19). The results show that calculated longitudinal temperatures
0.6 0.696 0.296 0.99 are in good agreement with the experimental results.
0.4 0.666 0.338 0.99

3.3.2. Transverse smoke temperature distribution under the ceiling

In tunnel fires, the hot gases travel at the transverse and
longitudinal directions. However, less study has been conducted
on the transverse smoke temperature distribution compared to
600 the longitudinal one. Fan et al. [24] conducted small-scale
Calculated longitudinal temperature rise (K)

0.075 m pan experiments to investigate the transverse smoke temperature

500 0.10 m pan distribution and developed an empirical equation, which is
0.15 m pan
0.20 m pan DT max;dt dt =w
400 ¼ 0:893e0:267 þ 0:107 ð20Þ
0.25 m pan DT max

300 where DT max;dt is the maximum temperature rise at a transverse dis-

tance of dt from the fire source, the expression of DT max is the same
200
as in Eq. (2). However, the tunnel width in their study is a constant,
which indicates that Eq. (20) may not predict the transverse smoke
temperature distribution accurately for different tunnel widths.
100
In the current study, the transverse temperature rises are
measured by the thermocouples along the transverse centerline.
0 Fig. 8(a) shows the transverse temperature distribution of 0.15 m
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 DT max;dt
pan. A dimensionless temperature rise DT max
and a dimensionless
Measured longitudinal temperature rise (K)
distance dt =w are used in Fig. 8(a) to show the temperature decay.
Fig. 7. Comparison of the measured and calculated longitudinal temperature rises. It can be seen that the transverse temperature decays slower as the
1100 J. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 106 (2016) 1094–1102

(a) 1.1 1.00

Transverse distribution
1.0 w = 1.0 m
0.9
w = 0.8 m
w = 0.6 m 0.95
0.8 w = 0.4 m
ΔT max, d / ΔT max

0.7

R-square
0.90
t

0.6

0.5 w = 1.0 m
w = 0.8 m
0.4 0.85 w = 0.6 m
0.3 w = 0.4 m
0.2
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.80
d t /w 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1
n
(b) 1.1
Fig. 9. Correlation coefficients for different n.
1.0 Transverse distribution
0.075 m pan
0.9 0.10 m pan Table 4
0.8 0.15 m pan Values of coefficients for transverse temperature distribution.
ΔT max, d / ΔT max

0.20 m pan
0.7 w A B C R2
0.25 m pan
1.0 0.762 0.652 0.247 0.98
t

0.6 0.8 0.735 0.806 0.270 0.98

0.6 0.687 1.276 0.322 0.98
0.5
0.4 0.596 2.319 0.414 0.97
0.4

0.3

0.2 Table 5
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 Values of A and C for transverse temperature distribution..
d t /w
w A C R2

Fig. 8. Dimensionless transverse temperature distributions for (a) 0.15 m pan 1.0 0.755 0.262 0.98
length with various tunnel widths and (b) 5 pans under the tunnel width of 0.8 m. 0.8 0.742 0.260 0.99
0.6 0.688 0.321 0.99
0.4 0.595 0.415 0.97

tunnel width decreases. As the tunnel width decreases the smoke

traveling distance decreases so the total heat loss along transverse
Determination of A, B and C
direction decreases, which makes more heat accumulating thus the
The same method in Section 3.3.1 is used to obtain A, B and C. B
transverse temperature decays slower.
DT max;d
is a function of w as in the longitudinal temperature distribution
Fig. 8(b) shows DT max
l
against dwt at a given tunnel width of 0.8 m. analysis.
DT max;dt
is plotted against dt
and the values of A, B and
DT max wQ_ 0:5
dt
It can be seen that when reaches 0.5, the dimensionless temper-
w C are listed in Table 4. The relationship between B and w can be
ature rise is higher for pan with larger pan size. Namely, the higher obtained by fitting the data in Table 4. Considering that B is a
the heat release rate is, the slower the transverse temperature dimensionless variable, we use the dimensionless tunnel width w H
decays with a same tunnel width. This indicates that transverse for fitting. The results are well fitted as follow with a correlation
temperature distribution is related to the heat release rate. Com- coefficient of 0.99:
paring Figs. 4 and 8 show that the transverse temperature distribu-
tion is more sensitive to the tunnel width than longitudinal B ¼ 1:67ðw=HÞ1:46 ð23Þ
temperature distribution. According to Eq. (20) and adopting the
Substituting Eq. (23) into Eq. (22) yields
similar analysis on longitudinal temperature distribution, the form
of transverse temperature distribution is expressed as DT max;dt dt 1:46 _ 0:5
¼ Ae w =½1:67ðw=HÞ Q  þ C ð24Þ
DT max;dt dt  DT max
¼ Ae w =ðBf ðQ ÞÞ þ C ð21Þ
DT max DT
Eq. (24) indicates that the dimensionless temperature rise, DTmax;d t
is
The same method as the longitudinal temperature rise is used  max
 w = 1:67ðw=HÞ1:46 Q_ 
dt 0:5

to determine f ðQ  Þ. The correlation coefficients are shown in linearly related to the exponential term e . The
Fig. 9. It can be observed that 0.5 performs the best among all fitting result shows that A and C are functions of w, which is similar
the n values. So 0.5 is taken as the value of n. Then Eq. (21) can to those in longitudinal temperature distribution. The values of A
change to and C for each tunnel width are listed in Table 5. Then we obtain
A and C by fitting the data in Table 5. Similarly, the dimensionless
DT max;dt dt 0:5
tunnel width w
¼ Ae w =ðBQ Þ þ C ð22Þ H
is used. The results are well fitted as follow with
DT max the correlation coefficient of 0.94:
 J. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 106 (2016) 1094–1102 1101

600 C ¼ 0:361ðw=HÞ0:564 ð25Þ

Calculated transverse temperature rise (K)

0.075 m pan
500 0.10 m pan When dt equal to 0, which means the position right above the fire
0.15 m pan DT max;dt
source, the dimensionless temperature rise DT max
should equal to
0.20 m pan
400 1. So the sum of A and C should equal to 1 accordingly, which means
0.25 m pan

300
A ¼ 1  0:361ðw=HÞ0:564 ð26Þ
The transverse temperature distribution is then obtained as:
200
DT max;dt 
¼ ð1  0:361ðw=HÞ0:564 ÞeQ 0:5
DT max
100
dt
 =ð1:67ðw=HÞ1:46 Þ þ 0:361ðw=HÞ0:564 ð27Þ
0
w
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 Fig. 10 shows the comparison of measured transverse tempera-
Measured transverse temperature rise (K) tures and the calculated values from Eq. (27). The results show that
calculated transverse temperatures are in good agreement with the
Fig. 10. Comparison of the measured and calculated transverse temperature rises.
experimental results.

1.2 3.3.3. Comparison with previous studies

Experimental data from [11] The correlations to predict the longitudinal smoke temperature
Calculated by Eq. (19) distribution were proposed by Refs. [8,11,16], as shown in Eqs. (4)–
1.0 Eq. (5) from [11] (6), respectively. However, these correlations are not suitable to
compare with the current study for the following reasons. The
0.8 measuring points of longitudinal temperatures in the study of Ji
ΔTmax, d / ΔTmax

et al. [8] were located at 1/4 w away from the tunnel sidewall
0.6 rather than at the longitudinal centerline (1/2w) of tunnel. In the
l

tests of Ingason and Li [11], fires were so large that the induced
0.4 flames hit the ceiling continuously, leading to the maximum tem-
perature DT max maintaining constant. While in our work, continu-
0.2
ous flame heights were lower than the tunnel ceiling. There is no
surprising that the calculated longitudinal temperatures using Eq.
(19) from this work will lower than the experimental data in Ref.
0.0
[11], as shown in Fig. 11. Since no correlation was proposed by Li
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
et al. [16] to predict the temperature rise at the reference position
d l /H DT max;dref , it is difficult for us to extract their numerical data to do
comparison. From the above discussions, we can conclude that
Fig. 11. Comparison of the calculated dimensionless longitudinal temperature rises
with the results from Ingason and Li [11].
Eq. (19) for predicting the longitudinal temperature distribution
needs to be validated in the future.

250 250 250

Exp. from [24] Exp. from [24] Exp. from [24]
200 Cal. by Eq. (27)
200 Cal. by Eq. (27) 200 Cal. by Eq. (27)
t
ΔTmax, d

t
ΔTmax, d
t
ΔTmax, d

150 150 150

100 Q =3.38 kW 100 Q =4.93 kW 100 Q=6.95 kW
50 50 50
0 0 0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
d t /w dt /w dt /w
250 250 250
Exp. from [24] Exp. from [24] Exp. from [24]
200 Cal. by Eq. (27)
200 Cal. by Eq. (27)
200 Cal. by Eq. (27)
ΔT max, dt
t
ΔTmax, d

t
ΔTmax, d

150 150 150

100 Q =9.44 kW 100 Q =12.56 kW 100 Q=16.45 kW
50 50 50
0 0 0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
dt / w d /w dt / w
t
250 250 250
Exp. from [24] Exp. from [24] Exp. from [24]
200 200 200
ΔT max, dt
t
ΔTmax, d

Cal. by Eq. (27) Cal. by Eq. (27) Cal. by Eq. (27)

t
ΔTmax, d

150 150 150

100 Q =21.21 kW 100 Q =23.80 kW 100 Q =29.57 kW
50 50 50
0 0 0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
dt / w d t /w dt /w

Fig. 12. Comparison of the calculated transverse temperature rises with the experimental data from Fan et al. [24].
1102 J. Ji et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 106 (2016) 1094–1102
Fan et al. [24] conducted 1/6 scale experiments to investigate
the transverse smoke temperature distribution with the tunnel
dimension of 6 m long, 2 m width and 0.88 m height. Nine
methanol pools with height of 15 cm were used as fire sources
and the heat release rate were between 3.38 kW and 29.57 kW.
Fig. 12 shows the comparison of the calculated transverse temper-
ature rises using Eq. (27) from this work with their experimental
data. It can be observed that the proposed formula performs well
and gives good predictions to the transverse temperature rises
under the tunnel ceiling.
4. Conclusions
This paper presents a systematic experimental investigation on
the influence of tunnel width on mass loss rate, maximum smoke
temperature, longitudinal and transverse smoke temperature dis-
tributions under the ceiling of methanol pool fires. The conclusions
are as follows.
(1) Tunnel width has little influence on the mass loss rate of
methanol pool fire within the current experimental range.
This is because the tunnel width is large enough so the heat
feedback from the sidewall is ignorable. The experimental
mass loss rates were compared with previous data and the
results imply that the current experimental outcomes are
reliable.
(2) Tunnel width has little influence on the maximum smoke
temperature within the current tunnel width range. An
empirical formula was developed and compared with the
experimental data in the current and previous studies. The
results show that the formula agrees well with the experi-
mental data.
(3) Tunnel width has significant influence on temperature dis-
tribution in both longitudinal and transverse directions.
The decay of smoke temperature is caused by the heat loss
from smoke to ceiling, sidewall and cool air. For the same
traveling distance at the longitudinal direction, the area of
smoke contacting the ceiling and cool air decreases with
tunnel width. So does the total heat loss. As a result, the lon-
gitudinal smoke temperature decays slower as the tunnel
width decreases. Similarly, the transverse smoke tempera-
ture also decays slower as the tunnel width decreases.
Empirical models are developed to predict longitudinal and
transverse smoke temperature distributions. The compar-
isons of experimentally measured and model predicted tem-
peratures show that the developed models can predict well
the temperature distributions.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by National Natural Science
Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant No. 51376173, National
Top-Notch Young Talents Program and the Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities under Grant No.
WK2320000033.
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