Study on the influence of ventilation condition on the heat release rate of the CRH passenger rail car

The ventilation condition is one of the main factors that determine the Heat Release Rate (HRR). In order to reveal the influence of ventilation condition on the HRR of China Railways High-speed (CRH) passenger rail car and help the fire protection engineers to choose the right HRR during the fire risk assessment of high-speed rail system in China, the HRR and other thermal parameters of the individual materials and component assemblies of CRH passenger rail car, are measured with the Cone Calorimeter and other test instruments, as the input parameters of Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), and 2 fire scenarios have been designed to obtain the HRR vs. time curves of CRH passenger rail car on the different ventilation conditions, such as the location and number of the open windows. The research results show that the ventilation condition exerts a significant influence on the HRR of CRH passenger rail car, which is in the range of 18.4 similar to 37.9 MW according to the different ventilation conditions; if only one window is open, the closer the open window gets to the ignition source, the higher the HRR is; if several windows are open at the time, the HRR is the highest as 2 windows are open, which is 37.9 MW. The HRR of CRH passenger rail car dramatically fluctuates with the different ventilation conditions, so the HRR of CRH passenger rail car should be chosen and applied carefully. (C) 2013 International Association for Fire Safety Science. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.