Fire safety in buildings tunnels and subway stations

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The proposed research deals with fire safety in tunnels and underground subway stations and large spaces in buildings. It continues the research program of the applicant in this area and capitalizes on the advancements achieved over the last few years in measuring the heat release rate of large-scale fires. The proposed work combines both numerical and experimental work in an effort to understand the burning characteristics of large fires in tunnels, such as the development of fires in subway and train cars, their heat release rate and the production of toxic gases. In addition, the work investigates the performance of smoke control and smoke management systems installed in these facilities and their interaction with suppression systems. Suppression systems in tunnels, although used in other countries, are not used in North America due to a lack of understanding of their impact on life safety and on the effectiveness of the ventilation systems. An initial study by the applicant has shown that the suppression systems can work together with ventilation systems to improve life safety and property protection. The results of this research would be of prime importance for the design of ventilation and suppression systems in tunnels and subway stations. The experimental work will utilize the unique, full scale fire research capabilities that the applicant developed at Carleton University as well small scale equipment, such as the cone calorimeter, for determining the fire properties of materials. Results of the small scale tests will be used as input to Computational Fluid Dynamics models that will be used to simulate the large scale experiments. Comparisons will be made between the numerical predictions and the experimental data to determine whether the models are capable of predicting the heat release rate of fires in traincars, smoke movement in tunnels and the performance of the ventilation systems and suppression systems. The proposed research also investigates the performance of smoke management systems in large spaces, such as atria, found in buildings. It specifically deals with the impact of make-up air velocity on the effectiveness of the smoke exhaust systems.