The rise in hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) is expected to pose a variety of hazards on the road. Vehicles using hydrogen could cause significant damage, owing to hydrogen vapor cloud explosions, jet fires caused by leakage, or hydrogen tank explosions. This risk is expected to further increase in semi-enclosed spaces, such as underground parking lots and road tunnels. Therefore, it is necessary to study the fire safety of hydrogen vehicles in semi-enclosed spaces. In this study, an experiment on hydrogen tank explosion was performed. In addition, the CFD numerical model was verified using the experimental results, and the damaging effect due to pressure propagation during hydrogen tank explosions in underground parking lots and road tunnels was analyzed using numerical analysis. From the experiment results, the hydrogen tank exploded at about 80 Mpa, a maximum incident pressure is generated 267 kPa at a distance of 1.9 m. As a result of numerical analysis based on the experimental results, the limit distance that can cause serious injury due to the explosion of a hydrogen tank in a road tunnel or underground parking lot was analyzed up to about 20 m from the point of explosion.

The Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology is currently developing a planetary surface environment simulator for the Moon and Mars. Known as a dirty thermal vacuum chamber (DTVC)

Composite panels are designed to be fabricated by adding Styrofoam, glass wool, and urethane into steel plates before integration with adhesive materials. As these panels exhibit good workability, cost efficiency, and heat insulation performance, they are widely used as building materials for plant or storage facilities. However, fire safety still needs to be addressed, because these panels can potentially cause large fires. As firewater cannot easily penetrate the material inside the panel, extinguishing any fires caused is difficult. Furthermore, the imperfect combustion of the core material tends to generate a large volume of toxic gas, resulting in serious damage to human life. In addition, the high risk of collapse makes fire-fighting activities more difficult. Flame spread prevention systems optimized for composite panels have been developed for more effective fire suppression based on accumulative research outcomes obtained thus far. Related test methods were reviewed before successfully demonstrating the performance of the developed systems. The existing composite panel structure—wherein the developed system was not applied-burned out after 5 min; however, when the developed system was applied to the composite panels, the structure was covered in soot after 15 min. The structure was designed by applying the developed system to a virtual factory building, and the construction standard was reviewed.