The Influence of the Filling Percentage Traffic on Required Ventilation Thrust in Road Tunnel

For an accurate and reliable prediction of the thrust value of a ventilation system for a highway road tunnel, it is necessary to evaluate the losses due to the presence of vehicles. Typically the vehicles losses were evaluated by semi empirical formula based on additively principle, i.e. the traffic jam losses are equal to the sum of each vehicle losses corrected by means empirical coefficient. The aim of this paper is compare results carried out by the 3-D CFD model, with those obtained by the semi-empirical correlation, provided in literature. Several traffic jam conditions for a fixed tunnel geometry and average air velocity have to be considered in order to evaluate the influence of the Filling Percentage Traffic (FPT) of the tunnel on required ventilation thrust from point of view of energy saving.