The factors determining the number of the endangered people in a case of fire in a road tunnel

A fire outbreak in a road tunnel is the most dangerous threat to the people who are trapped inside. The main danger is the generation of large amounts of toxic smoke. Tunnel fires develop in an unpredictable way, but the conditions get worse very quickly. Therefore the self-evacuation involving suitable decisions and proficient actions is of crucial importance. The work presents a number of scenarios of the tunnel fires and the following evacuation. Different tunnel fire detection delays, types of ventilation system, traffic conditions, fire locations and fire powers were taken into account. The research was conducted by the combined numerical simulation: VISSIM software was used to simulate the traffic and the formation of congestion, FDS was used to reproduce the fire development and PATHFINDER was used to simulate the evacuation and to estimate injures. To embrace the great number of factors influencing the described issue the Taguchi method of experiment design was applied. It allowed also for determining the relative influence of these factors on the evacuation process.