Experimental study on the maximum excess ceiling gas temperature generated by horizontal cable tray fires in urban utility tunnels

Safety concerns on cable tray fires in urban utility tunnels, which may further trigger huge casualties, ceiling structure damages, power failures and other domino effects, attract increasing attention in recent years. Determining the maximum excess ceiling gas temperature (MECT) induced by cable tray fires in urban utility tunnels is crucial to evaluate the fire risks. A series of one-layer horizontal cable tray fire experiments to explore the MECT were carried out in a large-scale utility tunnel without mechanical ventilations. The number of cables on the tray was varied from 8 to 18 in the experiments. The experimental results showed that the cable tray fire burning could be divided into three distinct stages, including ignition, self-sustaining and decaying stages. In the self-sustaining combustion stage, the cable tray was found to burn relatively steady. The mean MECT was also investigated since it represents one of the main characteristics of the cable tray fire. By redefining two parameters (the heat release rate and the effective ceiling height) in three classical MECT models proposed originally based on pool-fire, these three models could be extended to be able to predict the mean MECT generated from the cable tray fire (solid combustible) within 20% deviations. Consequently, two novel models were respectively proposed to predict the mean MECT at the self-sustaining burning period and the instantaneous MECT of one-layer horizontal cable tray fire in utility tunnel, which would be useful in the field of fire protection engineering.