Fire safe­ty research

IFAB has been very active in fire safe­ty research. Cur­rent­ly IFAB is a sub-con­trac­tor of the con­sor­tum (BAM, FOGTEC and STUVA) in the research project SUVEREN (Safe­ty of City Under­ground Struc­tures due to the use of New Ener­gy Car­ri­ers). The project stud­ies fire safe­ty of under­ground traf­fic infra­struc­ture with new ener­gy car­ri­ers. IFAB is respon­si­ble for the exe­cu­tion of a series of large scale fire tests with Lithi­um Ion bat­tery packs and gaseous fuels.

SOLIT2 (Safe­ty Of Life In Tun­nels) is anoth­er exam­ple for a major Euro­pean research project where IFAB was deeply involved. IFAB planned and realised large scale fire tests togeth­er with the Insti­tut der Feuer­wehr (IdF) Hey­roths­berge. This project was the largest research project with tun­nel full scale fire tests.  The SOLIT2 test pro­gram  includ­ed over 40 full scale fire tests in com­bi­na­tion with fixed fire-fight­ing sys­tems and ven­ti­la­tion.  The aim of the project was to quan­ti­fy how fixed fire-fight­ing sys­tems are able to com­pen­sate the design para­me­ters of oth­er safe­ty sys­tems such as pas­sive pro­tec­tion or ven­ti­la­tion in  tun­nels.  More info­ma­tion is found on www.SOLIT.info.  UPTUN and SOLIT1 are oth­er well-known under­ground research projects where IFAB or its key per­son­nel have had a major role.

IFAB also has car­ried out mul­ti­ple full scale fire tests for pri­vate organ­i­sa­tions like tun­nel oper­a­tors (ATMB) of the Mont-Blanc tun­nel, who financed exten­sive com­par­i­son fire tests in full scale with Del­uge, low-pres­sure water mist and high pres­sure water mist.

Although the largest research projects have typ­i­cal­ly been con­nect­ed to road or rail tun­nels, IFAB has also been involved in a num­ber of small­er projects. Those often were linked to some fire haz­ards such as dust explo­sions or fire fer­til­iz­ers.

Net­work­ing

IFAB’s inter­na­tion­al co-oper­a­tion net­work cov­ers numer­ous major fire safe­ty research organ­i­sa­tions and approval bod­ies. IFAB and its key per­son­nel also work on var­i­ous stan­dard­i­s­a­tion com­mit­tees such as EN/DIN and NFPA. A list of the dif­fer­ent co-oper­a­tion part­ners, stan­dards com­mit­tees with IFAB per­son­nel and approval bod­ies (IFAB tests meet their test­ing require­ments) is giv­en below.
– Nation­al Fire Pro­tec­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (NFPA750, NFPA502, NFPA130), www.nfpa.org
– Euro­pean Norms (EN45545), www.cen.eu
– VdS Schaden­ver­hü­tung GmbH, www.vds.de
– TÜV SÜD Rail GmbH, https://www.tuvsud.com/en-gb/industries/infrastructure-and-rail/rail
– TÜV NORD GmbH, www.tuev-nord.de/de
– STUVA, Stu­di­enge­sellschaft für unterirdis­che Verkehrsan­la­gen e.V., www.stuva.de
– Inter­na­tion­al Water Mist Asso­ci­a­tion, IWMA, www.iwma.net
– ITA-COSUF, Com­mit­tee on Oper­a­tional Safe­ty of Under­ground Facil­i­ties, www.ita-aites.org/wg-committees/committees/ita-cosuf