Studying the behavior of pavements used in road tunnels in case of fire

Jorge A. Capote Abreu
Daniel Alvear Portilla
Lazaro Mariano Urrutia
Jorge Crespo Alvarez
Puente Eduardo González

GIDAI group
Fire Safety
Research and Technology
University of Cantabria

ABSTRACT

In recent years, interest has grown in analyzing the contribution of the pavement to the growth of the fire to improve safety in road tunnels, due to its importance in the evaluation of the fire propagation conditions in these infrastructures. However, there are few references that have analyzed or quantified the toxic gases that are emitted during their combustion.

This paper presents the results that have been made based on simultaneous analysis of Cone Calorimeter and FTIR ( "Fourier TransformInfraRed") to evaluate the contribution to fire growth of two types of pavement (concrete pavement and asphalt pavement) and the gases emitted during combustion.

The results indicate that there are significant differences in the behavior recorded by both materials during testing. It is concluded that during the analysis for fire safety in tunnels must take into account the contribution of asphalt pavement, both from the point of view of the contribution to fire growth, reducing visibility levels and the emission of toxic gases .

KEYWORDS

Tunnel, pavement, rigid pavement, asphalt pavement, Fire in tunnel, pavement performance, heat transfer rate, gas emissions, FTIR, Concrete, Bituminous mixture.