Review of Research on critical velocity in tunnel fire

Abstract

The critical velocity is the key for tunnel fire control. If the longitudinal ventilation velocity is greater than the critical velocity when the fire occurs, the upstream of the fire source is smokeless, and the smoke will flow to the downstream of the fire source, which can effectively control the fire spread and provide valuable time for personnel to escape and fire fighting. The researches of domestic and foreign scholars are used to investigate the influencing factors of critical velocity. the results show that the main influencing factors of critical velocity are fire heat release rate, tunnel section geometry, obstacle and slope in tunnel, etc. In this paper, the influencing factors are summarized, and some problems that need to be studied in tunnel fire are put forward.