TY - JOUR
TI - Upgrade of a transverse ventilation system in a bi-directional tunnel
AU - Vidmar Peter
AU - Petelin Stojan
AU - Luin Blaž
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2012
VL - 16
IS - 4
SP - 1067
EP - 1080
PT - Article
AB - The Karavanke tunnel forms an important link between Slovenia and Austria.  The almost 8 km long tunnel is operated with bi-directional traffic and does  not have dedicated escape routes. Moreover, the ventilation in case of fire  does not satisfy requirements of the EU Directive 2004/54/EC that specifies  the minimum requirements for tunnels in the trans-European road network. The  paper present results of the research conducted regarding the possibility of  upgrade the existing system in order to reach the required level of safety at  lower costs possible. It is shown that with simple but novel adaptations of  the ventilation system, a sizeable increase in the overall level of safety  can be achieved. The methodology applied is a combination of a simple pipe  model for tunnel ventilation and for detailed fluid dynamics analysis the CFD  model is used. The existing ventilation system that in fire ventilation  extracts smoke from a single duct is replaced with the smoke extraction from  both ducts applying four axial fans. The analysis is focused on air/smoke  flow through the vents and ducts and on pressure drops calculated over the  length of the ventilation duct and its influence on the total flow. The  change of the flow condition also has influence on ventilation fan operation  point that is investigated in the paper as well.