Case Study on Determining the Design Fire when Installing Sprinkler Systems in Railway Halls

To ensure fire protection in the railway hall environment, the key measure is currently the installation of a sprinkler system, which can quickly and effectively minimize a possible fire, or even completely eliminate it shortly after it occurs. However, in order for the equipment to be adequately activated and respond to a fire, it is essential that its design primarily takes into account the complex dynamics of the fire, or rather its origin and subsequent development, which are described in detail in fire design scenarios and design fires. Design fires express the behavior of a fire with specific parameters in specific conditions, which will allow for the subsequent design of an effective response of the sprinkler equipment to a fire. A properly created design fire therefore provides the necessary basis for the precise setting of the equipment parameters and its effective functioning in specific fire conditions. Although design fires are of paramount importance in designing fire safety measures for buildings, determining them can sometimes be problematic, even for railway halls. The aim of the article is therefore to present a study in which the design fire was determined when installing a sprinkler system for railway halls, which is the starting material for the subsequent design of these devices and their interaction with other devices. The study was processed using standard calculations to determine the response time of sprinkler heads and subsequently verified by the CFAST fire model. The results of the study demonstrate that even though the response time of sprinkler heads varies significantly (range 119 – 223 s), the values ​​of the heat release rate reach only small differences even with fundamentally different fire loads (581 – 675 kW). The study demonstrates that the fire load does not have a significant impact on the heat release rate. This finding will be the basis for further research into fire dynamics when installing sprinkler systems.