Fire safety analysis of a railway compartment using computational fluid dynamics.

Enbaya, Anwar; Asim, Taimoor; Mishra, Rakesh; Rao, Raj B.K.N.

Abstract

Trains are considered to be the safest on land transportation for both passengers and cargo. Train accidents have been disastrous especially in case of fire, where the consequences results in loss of life and goods. The fire would generate smoke and heat which would spread quickly inside the railway compartments. Both heat and smoke are the primary reasons for causalities in a train. This study has been carried out to perform numerical analysis of fire characteristics in a railway compartment using commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics code ANSYS. Non-premixed combustion model has been used to simulate a fire scenario within a railway compartment, while Shear Stress Transport k-ω turbulence model has been used to accurately predict the hot air turbulence parameters within the compartment. The walls of the compartment have been modelled as no-slip stationary adiabatic walls, as is observed in real-life conditions. Carbon dioxide concentration, temperature distribution and air flow velocity within the railway compartment has been monitored. It has been observed that the smoke above the fire source flows to both sides of the compartment. The highest temperature zone is located downstream the fire source, and gradually decreases with the increase in the distance from the fire source. It can be seen that the CFD can be used as an effective tool in order to analyse the evolution of fire in railway compartments with reasonable accuracy. This paper also briefly discussed the topical reliability issues.

Citation

ENBAYA, A., ASIM, T., MISHRA, R. and RAO, R.B.K.N. 2015. Fire safety analysis of a railway compartment using computational fluid dynamics. International journal of COMADEM [online] 18(3), pages 37-44. Available from: http://www.comadem.com/journal/past-issues/

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 31, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Jul 31, 2015
• Publication Date: Jul 31, 2015
• Deposit Date: Mar 12, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 13, 2020
• Journal: International journal of COMADEM
• Electronic ISSN: 1363-7681
• Publisher: COMADEM International
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 37-44
• Keywords: Railway compartment; Fire modelling; Computational fluid dynamis; ANSYS
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/867431