- 39 - 5 th International Conference ‘Tunnel Safety and Ventilation’ 2010, Graz EXPERIENCES ON THE SPECIFICATION OF ALGORITHMS FOR FIRE AND SMOKE CONTROL IN ROAD TUNNELS Espinosa, I.*; Fernández, S.*; Del Rey, I. + ; Alarcón, E. 2+ * FFII - CEMIM. Madrid. Spain. + ETSII-Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Madrid. Spain. ABSTRACT The main objective of ventilation systems in case of fire is the reduction of the possible consequences by achieving the best possible conditions for the evacuation of the users and the intervention of the emergency services. The required immediate transition, from normal to emergency functioning of the ventilation equipments, is being strengthened by the use of automatic and semi-automatic control systems, what reduces the response times through the help to the operators, and the use of pre-defined strategies. A further step consists on the use of closed-loop algorithms, which takes into account not only the initial conditions but their development (air velocity, traffic situation, etc), optimizing smoke control capacity. Key Words: Ventilation, fire safety, smoke control. 1. INTRODUCTION The transposition of the European Directive 2004/54/CE (1) to the Spanish regulation was finalized with the publication, in 2006, of the RD 635/2006 (2) on minimum safety requirements for road tunnels. One of the key aspects included in these two regulations is the necessity, in most of the tunnels, of automatic ventilation control systems, both in normal operation and fire case. The main requirements to be achieved by the use of control systems are the reduction in the response time for ventilation activation and the implementation of predefined strategies both for manual and automatic response of fire safety facilities. However, when trying to establish the criteria for the specification of predefined ventilation strategies, various aspects must be taken into account which depends on the type of ventilation system and traffic operation conditions previous to the incident development. Even, in some cases, an appropriate management of fire incidents requires complex multi-step strategies that must be predefined and implemented in the control systems. 2. BACKGROUND During the last decades, a great amount of resources have employed for the study and development of ventilation control systems during normal operation, which included the use of closed loop algorithms and fuzzy logic for the optimization and improvement of the efficiency (CETU, ref. 3). However, during the last years, the reduction of the emission levels of the vehicles is reducing the efforts involved in the development of new technologies and methods for the control of the ventilation during normal operation. On the opposite, ventilation control in case of fire is becoming of the utmost importance. Going to the past, the PIARC report on “Fire and Smoke control in Road tunnels” (ref. 4) in 1999 already reflected the importance, and lack of unique rules, on the use of active control systems for the operation of ventilation.