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  Passive fire protection and life safety

  The positive effect of passive fire protection – namely protecting the tunnel lining with boards or mortars to prevent the tunnel from severe structural damage during the fire and to maintain sufficient durability after the fire - has been proved in many severe tunnel fire accidents in the past. Tunnels are a vital and vulnerable point of the transportation networks global wide. In case of an accident and closure of the tunnel, for instance for repair work due to losses of durability or structural loadbearing capacity, the socio-economical impact would be rather enormous. However, in this paper, it is studied in which way the use of passive fire protection in tunnel linings can also contribute to life safety conditions. This positive hypothesis is based upon observations of the BENELUX fire tests (see Fig. 1), where a tunnel provided by passive fire protection at the ceiling, shows the existence of a stratified smoke layer over a very long distance [1, 2, 3]. It was expected that this stratification would not stand that long due to cooling down of the hot air. It is clear that from a life safety point of view, the existence of such a stratified smoke layer has important advantages.

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