Tunnel du Puymorens, France

An important refurbishing work has been realised in order to adapt the Puymorens Tunnel to the lasts regulation improvements.

During the commissioning of the tunnel in 1994, escape routes where not safe enough in terms of fire safety. The work carried out focused on digging new shelters and developping part of the current smoke ventilation systems in evacuation gallery in the view to guarantee a better fire protection in case of incident.

Protecting from fire rescue routes

45 000 m² of PROMATECT®-T boards were necessary to reach a N2 (HCM 120) level of thermal insulation on the underside of the concrete slab that separates the traffic area and the ventilation zone. In addition, 20 000 m² of PROMATECT®-T boards have been installed to protect the smoke extraction and ventilation systems from fire and also to keep a low level of service temperature in the rescue route.

Creating security shelters and refurbishing the old ones

Every 400 metres, nine security shelters were also designed and secured with 30mm PROMATECT®-T board solutions. Two other existing security shelters were also refurbished to guarantee safety in case of fire. This new fire compartmentalisation is able to resist during 120min in case of fire attack so that people can wait for rescue in there and reach the exit in safe conditions via the rescue routes connected to each security shelter.

Designing protection for service enclosures

Service enclosures such as high voltage cables, communication cables and pipes have to keep functionning in case of fire in order to ensure communication with the outside and make easier the evacuation. In that sense, level N3 (HCM 120 et EI 240) was required for that tunnel. 600 m² of PROMATECT®-T boards were used to protect from fire enclosures from where are stored high voltage cables so that the fire can’t be propagated of low security issues.