Application and Limitations of a Method Based on Pyrolysis Models to Simulate Railway Rolling Stock Fire Scenarios

This article relates the application of pyrolysis models to products used onboard trains, as part of a fire safety engineering design or assessment. It is based on work performed during the European Research program, TRANSFEU. As a first step in the methodology, risk analysis permits identification of the most critical scenarios to be studied, considering actual operational conditions and rules in the European railway network. The study of one such scenario has been performed using advanced numerical tools and a multi-scale approach from raw material to real scale, in order to validate the application of such techniques in fire risk assessment. Simulations have been compared to experimental data at each scale. This predictive method shows a good capability to properly reproduce fire growth, heat release rate, temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations in a real-scale scenario. On the other hand, this study highlights poor prediction of concentrations of carbon monoxide and other toxic species.