Objective-level resilience assessment of circular roadway tunnels with reinforced concrete liners for vehicle fire hazards

Abstract

A framework is presented to quantify the objective-level resilience of reinforced concrete liners of circular tunnels when exposed to enclosed vehicle fire hazards. By assessing the loss of functionality due to fire-induced damage, the framework enables a decision-basis evaluation of the efficiency of various fire mitigation methods for specific tunnel conditions. In this study, the fire-induced damage of concrete tunnel liners due to strength loss and spalling is stochastically simulated and classified based on typical post-fire repair procedures and damage evaluation. The resilience assessment is conducted using Monte Carlo Simulation in combination with a fast-running tool for calculating the thermal impact from vehicle fires on the inside surface of the tunnel liner (developed by the authors in previous work). The proposed approach accounts for uncertainties associated with both the vehicle fire (particularly the combustion energy) and the tunnel conditions (i.e., geometry, dimensions, and the presence of longitudinal ventilation and/or fixed fire-fighting systems (FFFS)). A parametric case study is used to quantitatively demonstrate the effectiveness of FFFS for reducing post-fire losses of tunnel functionality. Other parameters such as tunnel dimensions, traffic restrictions for vehicles with heavy fire hazard risk, and installation or upgrade of the tunnel ventilation system show somewhat less effectiveness for reducing fire-induced damage.

Keywords

• roadway tunnel
• circular reinforced concrete liner
• vehicle fire
• structural fire resilience
• fixed firefighting system
• longitudinal tunnel ventilation