Study on Applicability of FDS+Evac for Evacuation Modeling in Case of Road Tunnel Fire

In this study, fire in a short 2-lane single-directional road tunnel with two different traffic situations is considered and the impact of spread of fire and smoke on people evacuation is investigated. The FDS+Evac system used comprises of FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator), an advanced CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) fire field model supplemented by agent-based FDS evacuation model, Evac. Evac is capable to exploit its direct access to simulated fire characteristics and to model the influence of fire on evacuees’ behavior and decision making. In Evac, a modified Helbing’s social force model adapted for description of movement of evacuees and their behavior is implemented. Some particularities of FDS+Evac, which must be taken into account to avoid misrepresentation of inputs for evacuation in case of fire, are discussed and the impact of occurrence of higher capacity vehicles on people evacuation is illustrated. Simulation results and some of comments and recommendations included can be useful for those who are engaged in research, development, testing and competent use of FDS+Evac for practical problems of fire safety in road tunnels.