1. Scope

Opening protectives, mechanical, electrical or structural service functionality in transportation tunnels and other rapid heat-rise, high-temperature fires.

Keywords

RWS and MOAC fire-resistance of opening protectives mechanical, electrical or structural service functionality in transportation tunnels and other rapid heat-rise, high-temperature fires.

Rationale

E3134 established a test procedure for tunnel linings (parent assemblies) as well as movement joints between tunnel lining segments. Traffic tunnels routinely have accessories, as in other items within or adjacent to the fire-resistive linings. These include, but are not limited to, service tunnels for mechanical and electrical services, such as electrical circuits for lighting, emergency power, fans (exhaust fumes from engines as well as, potentially, smoke, and pressurisation, potentially for egress and areas of refuge) as well as plumbing to pump out water that can collect in a traffic tunnel. These accessories then also involve opening protectives, such as fire doors, fire dampers, firestops, but also circuit integrity fireproofing, etc., all of which are currently not tested to the new time/temperature curves given in E3134, but, instead, to E119 or the UL1709 curves, which are less critical than the RWS or MOAC curves given in E3134 by ca. 250C or 482F, which demonstrably makes a big difference in performance for many building materials. The concept here, is to qualify the accessories inside of traffic tunnels, and/or other facilities that may choose to employ either of the E3134 curves, such that fire barriers (parent assemblies) qualified to the RWS or MOAC curve can remain continuous at the point of accessory interface, because a 2h E119 or UL1709 curve qualified accessory, is not the equal of a 2h RWS or MOAC curve qualified parent assembly and there is no way to be certain of any equivalence, as in perhaps a 2h MOAC qualified item may translate to a 3h E119 qualified item. For accessories to be qualified, they must be tested to their parent standards but the chosen E3134 curve, in addition to other test criteria relevant to the application, in order to provide useful information to an AHJ and/or end-user, in the absence of an AHJ, being that a tunnel is not a building, and thus does not require a building permit per a building code, but can interface with one, for example, in the event of a station that is traversed by a tunnel, whereby the station, for the most part, is a building, which then interfaces with a tunnel, which is built to different standards. Additionally, any fire scenario in a tunnel produces such a high life safety challenge, that the work item is intended to address the known, extreme circumstances via defeating technical challenges that are known in existing parent assembly and accessory standards, forming part of building regulations, which have not garnered sufficient votes for remedies to be applied in standards intended for buildings, which have better egress, than a tunnel, on fire.

The title and scope are in draft form and are under development within this ASTM Committee.