Use of Small-Scale Test Data to Enhance Fire-Related Threat, Vulnerability, Consequence and Risk Assessment for Passenger Rail Vehicles

Fires in passenger rail vehicles pose threats to people and to critical transportation infrastructure. Although relevant guidelines and regulations exist, current approaches lack details needed for comprehensive fire-related threat, vulnerability, consequence and risk assessment (TVCRA), particularly with respect to identifying the size of initiation fire necessary to ignite the interior lining materials, assessing the potential for a fire to encompass the entire vehicle, and evaluating options for reducing the overall energy of a fully involved vehicle fire. However, these shortcomings can be addressed cost effectively by obtaining fire properties of materials used in passenger rail vehicles through small-scale tests, applying a simplified flame spread screening approach using the test data, and incorporating the output into an existing fire TVCRA framework. With these enhancements, operators will be better able to link vulnerabilities and consequences to a range of fire threats, and have more robust data for informing fire mitigation and operational response decisions.