Numerical simulation of aerodynamics and ventilation of underground road tunnel systems

Abstract

Underground road and rail tunneling works are on the rise in land-scarce Singapore to provide efficient public transportation systems and to ease traffic congestion. In order to ensure proper functioning of tunnels for road/rail transport, there is a need during the preliminary design stage, for the development of systematic analysis and design for the installation of efficient ventilation, smoke and pollution control systems i.e. HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems) so as to achieve desirable ventilation conditions in underground road tunnels. Such a need can be fulfilled by developing computer based design tools based on the modern state of the art Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technology such as FLUENT suite of CFD codes to enable engineers to do realistic modeling during the design and development phases.