Influence of emergency lay-bys on smoke stratification in case of fire in bi-directional tunnel: parallel simulation

Abstract

The main goal of longitudinal ventilation in case of fire in bi-directional road tunnel is to maintain smoke stratification, which is necessary for safe evacuation of people. This study investigates the influence of emergency lay-bys on smoke stratification in a 900 m long road tunnel by computer simulation using a parallel version of Fire Dynamics Simulator. The calculations were performed on the high performance computer cluster at the Institute of Informatics, Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava (Slovakia). Several scenarios of fire in the tunnel without and with two laybys were simulated and compared. The most significant differences between smoke visibilities in both cases can be observed in the area of the lay-by located downstream of the fire. Several other differences are analysed as well.