ROAD TUNNEL LIGHTING - Amazon S3

1 Via Artigianale Croce, 13 42035 Castelnovo ne Monti (RE) Tel. +39 0522 610 611 Fax. +39 0522 810 813 road TUNNEL LIGHTING LIGHTING power controllers RNIG02E2 0206 road TUNNEL LIGHTING Power controllers rev. 2 Pag. 3 of 14 I N D E X 1. PREAMBLE 4 2. road TUNNEL LIGHTING STANDARDS 4 3. THE TERMINOLOGY 4 4. THE FOCAL POINTS OF THE PROBLEM 4 5. THE VISUAL TASK 5 6. THE LIGHTING INSTALLATION AND POWER CONTROLLERS IN THE REINFORCEMENT ZONES 8 7. THE PERMANENT LIGHTING CIRCUITS 10 8. THE EMERGENCY LIGHTING CIRCUITS 12 9. CONCLUSIONS 12 APPENDIX A TERMINOLOGY 13 road TUNNEL LIGHTING Pag.

2 4 of 14 Power controllers rev. 2 1. PREAMBLE The LIGHTING of road tunnels is aimed at assuring traffic safety, a not easy task. The car drivers arrive from the external environment with a natural LIGHTING level which can be very high, even over 100000 lx horizontally. Consequently, they look at a TUNNEL like at a black hole in which they are supposed to perceive the presence of dangerous situations, like obstacles, queues or traffic stops. Not to say about the luminance of the exterior environment around the TUNNEL opening (like the summer sky or the daylight reflected by the snow) which create a form of glaring which reduces the visibility.

3 In order to minimise installation and energy costs for TUNNEL LIGHTING , norms foresee to correlate road luminance with actual external LIGHTING and traffic flow. These are conditions where the use of the regulators of luminous flux show very interesting aspects from the points of view of both the LIGHTING applications and more generally of the economic implications. In the present document the problem of setting the LIGHTING level in road tunnels is described with particular attention on both technologies of the regulators designed and manufactured by Reverberi Enetec srl, without any attempt to give a complete picture of their performances, which are described in the general catalogue of Reverberi Enetec srl.

4 2. road TUNNEL LIGHTING STANDARDS After the known accident in the Mount Blanc TUNNEL , the Italian Ministry of Public Works issued a circular, published on Gazzetta Ufficiale of 18 September 2001, which requests the compliance with the publication CIE 88/90 guide to the LIGHTING of road tunnels and underpasses and foresees a tight updating programme for the existing LIGHTING installations. The character of CIE 88/90, which was prepared and issued under urgent pressures, is mostly empirical and leads to conservative and expensive prescriptions, very often disregarded by road and highway administrators. Actually, both new and updated TUNNEL LIGHTING installations complying with CIE 88/90 involve either investments and maintenance costs much higher than necessary.

5 This is why CIE will soon publish an updated version of CIE 88/90 based on scientific foundations, which assures even higher safety levels in tunnels with less expensive prescriptions. Based on the same principles, UNI issued the norm 11095 LIGHTING of tunnels (2003), under acceptance by the Ministry of Infrastructures and Transportations, similar to the updated CIE 88 but for some luminance levels, which have no influence on the use of luminous flux regulators. 3. THE TERMINOLOGY The LIGHTING terms used in the present document are defined at appendix A. 4. THE FOCAL POINTS OF THE PROBLEM The situation of road tunnels in Italy is clarified in the draft directive or the European Parliament 2002/0309 of the safety of traffic in the tunnels longer than 500 m existing in the Trans European Network (TEN), which includes only a minority of the Italian highways.

6 road TUNNEL LIGHTING Power controllers rev. 2 Pag. 5 of 14 Table 1 - Tunnels in the highways TEN, Trans European Network March 2002 Length Country > 1000 m > 500 m Austria 33 64 Belgium 1 2 Demmark 1 3 Finland 0 5 France 18 35 Germany 19 55

7 Great Britain 6 12 Greece 3 45 Ireland 0 1 Luxemburg 0 3 The Netherlands 1 11 Portugal 1 2 Spain 16 25 Sweden 0 3 UE minus Italy 99 266 Italy 83 246 Total UE Countries 182 512 The number of TEN tunnels in Italy is almost equal to that of all the other UE countries together.

8 Even if no analysis of the Italian road and highways tunnels is known, their number is estimated to be higher that 2000. Add to that that the Italian tunnels cross mountains, while in some flat countries there are only some underpasses and artificial tunnels and LIGHTING does not involve big economic problems. Taking account of what said at point 2, it can be easily understood that in the next years the LIGHTING installations of many tunnels will be updated according to the norm, not to say about the new tunnels as the ones foreseen in the new highway between Bologna and Florence. The consequence will be an increase of the requests of luminous flux regulators suitable for such types of installations.

9 5. THE VISUAL TASK Even if the aim of this document is not the LIGHTING design, it is convenient to summarise the content of the norm for the sake of better understanding the advantages implied in the application of the luminous flux regulators in road TUNNEL LIGHTING installations. Both CIE and UNI identify the safety conditions in the entrance zone of a TUNNEL with the visibility of a reference obstacle, actually a cube with 20 cm edges and diffusing faces with a reflection factor of 0,10: it is a very dark object, which is considered to represent the smallest potentially dangerous obstacle which could be found on our roads. road TUNNEL LIGHTING Pag. 6 of 14 Power controllers rev.

10 2 In particular, if such type of object was present on the road in the entrance section of a TUNNEL , an accident could be avoided only if the driver could perceive it at the stopping distance from the said section, in order to permit to stop the vehicle in due time. As sown in figure 1, the actual stopping distance is much higher than what reported in the journals specialised in the automobile sector: actually, not only real tyres and roads are almost never in ideal conditions, but account should be taken of the reaction time of the average driver, which the norms assume equal to 1,5 seconds. 501001502000100200300400 Wet roadDry roadStopping distance [m]Speed [km/h] Figure 1 Stopping distances versus speeds for horizontal roads Norms take account of what the driver sees from the stopping distance within a visual field of 30 horizontally and 20 vertically, as shown in figure 2 for a dry highway: it is without saying that the luminances in the visual field are completely different for the speeds of 70 km/h and 130 km/h.