Overview
While standardisation is one of the essential concerns of EU legislation, and a lot of national legal frameworks have been transformed to European directives, common measures, standards, designs and operations for a safer future for European rail transportation have yet to be developed.
The long march towards reaching the 'European Fire Safety Standard', TS45545, started in 1991. The initial reason given for the preparation of a document such as TS45545 was to ensure 'Minimal Trade Barriers' among European countries. After extensive studies, an interim Technical Specification, TS45545, was released in 2009.
Within this framework, studies have continued in recent years on conceiving new European laws, or Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSIs). These include three groups that concern rail vehicles: Safety in Railway Tunnels, High Speed Rolling Stock, and Conventional Rolling Stock. All of these are intended to allow for harmonious interworking of rolling stock within the EU.
A particular problem faced by the Committee developing TS45545 was that each major European state had their own individual test methods - usually based on local building regulations - for their local specifications. Naturally, all of these national regulations would be obsolete as soon as TS45545 was to be adopted. Furthermore, the lack of a generally accepted comparative measure to quantify standards had slowed down the adaptation process.
TRANSFEU aimed to develop a holistic approach of fire safety-performance based-design methodology able to support European surface transport standardisation. In particular, the project set out to directly contribute to the finalisation of the CEN EN45545/Part2 for a dynamic measure of toxicity and to use FSE (Fire Safety Engineering) and simulation as a possible alternative to current fire safety regulations and standards (TSI and TS45545).
The initial phase consisted of the realisation of dynamic toxic effect measurement. As planned, a prescriptive approach to the classification of data until 2010 is already in use in many European countries. The second step is the adoption of a fire safe design approach and a new generation of realistic dynamic measurement methodology for the emission of toxic fumes in case of fire until 2012. The final phase will be the formulation of new initiatives for safety in public surface transport which is subject to continuous improvement.
TRANSFEU is one of the most important efforts (also in economic terms) addressing the safety of passengers and crew in the event of a fire. It will be used to finalise the EN45545-2 standard as it will close the open points in the CR TSI, SRT TSI and HS TSI. TRANSFEU will define the EN standard for conducting the measurements and classifying the products. Then models will be developed to predict the fire behaviour and growth in public transport guided-systems fire scenarios.
The expected results are:
- A new generation of realistic dynamic measurement methodology of the emission of toxic fumes in case of fire;
- Cost-effective methods and modelling tools for fire safety design able to predict realistic fire behaviour and the time to reach critical conditions within passenger rail vehicles. Simulation tools will provide fire guidance on the design, on fire safety measures and a way to explore alternative designs;
- Validation of the new fire safety methods and tools in railway scenarios and of the toxic fire effluents classification criteria from products used on trains;
- Significant contribution to future fire safety standards for all means of surface transport.
The TRANSFEU approach will allow the assessment of the effectiveness of the total fire safety system in achieving the design objectives. It will also provide an alternative to the prescriptive approach and complementary fire protection strategies for the adoption of more complex and innovative but economically viable design objectives. This new holistic approach can propose a range of alternative and complementary fire safety strategies using innovative advanced materials able to achieve the design objectives of rail vehicles and other means of transportation, like marine craft. It will be based on:
- A new, accurate measurement tool for toxic gas fire effluents under dynamic conditions for Public Transport Guided Systems. This new tool will allow a continuous record of toxic gas concentrations versus time to be determined;
- A deeper understanding and measurement of underlying dynamic phenomena governing fire initiation, growth under typical railway vehicle scenarios, which can predict the real scale burning behaviour of products and assemblies;
- The adoption of fire safety engineering methodology that offers the necessary modelling tools for establishing realistic and acceptable economic levels of fire safety without unnecessary constraints in vehicle or vessel design. This will be supported by the development of original simulation tools;
- The application and validation of the tests, methods and tools in public transport guided systems fire safety scenarios and standardisation with potential to other surface transports.
TRANSFEU was organised in three principal parts which were distributed between seven work packages (WP), of which the five technical ones (WP2 to WP6) covered the following:
- WP2 focused on the development of a small-scale test method to measure the type and quantity of toxic gases produced during the combustion of products used in transport in a dynamic procedure. This method was used for the classification of products that reach the incapacitation and lethality thresholds in the specific scenarios in WP4 for railway vehicles, data processing and introduction in a dedicated database to supply the FSE models to assess the time within which the passengers must evacuate from fire scenario before the first critical conditions are reached.
- WP3 dealt with the development of a classification system for the toxicity of fire effluents from products on railway vehicles, which was based upon a conventional prescriptive appro
Funding
Results
The main TRANSFEU results can be summarised as below:
- Fire tests for toxicity of fire effluents have been undertaken. Bench scale tests have been performed, aiming at producing a database for fire safety engineering. This method has been accepted by the JWG to be included in the European standard EN 45545-2 (Requirements for fire behavior of materials and components).
- A conventional pragmatic classification system for the toxicity of fire effluents, has been developed. A classification system has been developed. This has been discussed with the JWG to be incorporated in the EN 45545-2. The decision was taken to incorporate the TRANSFEU classification in the revision of the standard. The validation of the conventional pragmatic toxicity classification criteria, has taken place.
- Development of a fire safety engineering methodology for surface transport (including the fire safety objective, risk analysis, design scenarios and data base).
- Development of Various numerical simulation tools have been developed: e.g evacuation of people, fire growth, toxic effects, fire effect on integrity, etc.
- Full scale and real scale tests.
Strategy targets
- TRANSFEU complies with the White paper for the Future Chemicals Policy concerning the protection of human health, by using the precautionary principle for materials utilisation in railway vehicles avoiding type of materials producing toxic hazards.
- TRANSFEU contributes to the REACH legislation.
- TRANSFEU will also contribute to establishing a science policy that is closer to citizens.
Policy objectives
An efficient and integrated mobility system: Acting on transport safety (saving thousands of lives).