The Passive Fire Protection of Mining Vehicles in Underground Hard Rock Mines
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The Passive Fire Protection of Mining Vehicles in Underground Hard Rock Mines Rickard Hansen 1 Received: 4 April 2020 / Accepted: 11 November 2020 # Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration Inc. 2020
Abstract Vehicle fires in underground mines pose a certain risk for which measures to prevent or mitigate the fires are highly important. This paper presents a study on passive fire protection measures to counter this risk, where data from full-scale fire experiments, cone calorimeter tests and statistical studies were applied. It addressed an overall question: what passive fire protection measures could be implemented with respect to the design of mining vehicles? Relying entirely on one type of passive measure may only be adequate for a specific stage of a fire and additional measures may be warranted for the other stages. Threshold distances for fuel components were calculated, and it was found that the combination of hydraulic hoses and electrical cables resulted in larger threshold distances, contributed to by the higher flame heights of the hydraulic hoses and the lower critical heat flux of the nonfire-resistant electrical cables. A pool fire along the underside of the vehicle will pose a certain risk, and passive fire protection measures should be focused at ignition prevention, making high demands on the insulation/shielding along the underside. Tyre fires could be prevented by steering the flow of flames and fire gases away from the tyres. An increased knowledge of such possible passive fire protection measures would improve the fire safety in underground mines. Keywords Fire protection . Mining vehicle . Ignition . Underground mine . Fire spread
1 Introduction Several studies on fires in underground mines showed that vehicles and mobile equipment are the dominant sources of fire in hard rock mines but also pose a risk in coal mines [1–3]. Earlier studies on fires in mining vehicles have focused on the fire’s behaviour and the impact on the surroundings [4–7]. Looking into measures to prevent vehicle fires or mitigate their effects is just as important as describing the fire behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to address one central question on the fire safety of mining vehicles: what passive fire protection measures could be implemented with respect to the design of mining vehicles? For this two preliminary questions were investigated. What risk areas can be found in mining vehicles? What potential fire spread paths can be identified? This research increases the knowledge about the risks connected with mining vehicles and potential measures taken to prevent a vehicle fire or mitigate the effects of a fire. * Rickard Hansen [email protected] 1
Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane QLD 4072, Australia
Fire protection measures can be divided into active and passive measures, where the former require an external power to work in the event of a fire, for example, the automatic activation of an extinguishing system or manual fire suppression using a fire extingui
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