Fire protection inspection and testing

Rail vehicle and rolling stock manufacturers, operators, and infrastructure managers face the challenge of guaranteeing personal safety including fire protection and protecting the value of assets and preservation of objectives (vehicles, stations, tunnels) as well as the protection of the environment.

In addition to legal and regulatory requirements, criteria of product and operator liability must also be considered.

Trusted expert services from a third party such as TÜV SÜD are vital to ensure safe rail operations, especially when it comes to railway fire safety and fire protection for railway technology.

Our railway fire protection inspection and testing services help you meet legal and regulatory requirements, considering product and operator liability.

Both in Europe and worldwide, standards and regulations are harmonised, continuously updated, and often made more rigorous. National and international laws, standards, and directives form an important basis for the assessment of rail vehicles, infrastructure, and components to ensure compliance with the defined protection objectives. It is mandatory to comply with the specifically defined protection goals pertaining to railway fire safety.

Our railway fire protection testing services, starting with system design, risk assessment, and development through to acceptance, support you in addressing all these challenges to ensure safe rail operation.

TÜV SÜD has long-standing experience and wide-ranging expertise in fire protection and personal safety in the rail sector.

We are recognised worldwide as a railway safety assessor. Many of our experts are recognised by German and other European and international authorities as experts and assessors. We apply a multidisciplinary, integrated testing approach for all aspects of safety assessment of vehicle technology, system technology for infrastructures and for railway operation in general. Our professional, process-oriented and risk-based system approach helps you to avoid excessive technical measures without compromising on essential safety. Our proactive approach to our customers’ individual situations generates significant potential savings in our customers’ value chain.

With our independent testing and assessment services, we offer support for rolling stock operators and owners, infrastructure operators, and vehicle and component manufacturers to ensure approval-ready product design and implementation throughout process chains.

Our services include:

Services for rolling stock:

• Inspection of newly built or refurbished / modernised rolling stock according to EN 45545-series or NFPA 130.
• Assessment and evaluation of fire risk analysis, e.g. for proof of equal safety if generic standards requirements cannot be applied. Can be applied to modernised vehicles or specific challenges in every rolling stock project, if allowed by regulations and/or authorities.
• Inspection and / or testing of fire detection, fire fighting and fire extinguishing systems according to ARGE directives, UNI 11565 or EN 50553.
• Real scale fire tests for purposes including proof of design fires or proof of equivalent safety in system assessments (vehicle/infrastructure/operation).
• Assessment of running capability of rolling stock in case of fire according to EN 50553.
• Assessment of rolling stock design fires by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation.
• Assessment of vehicle integration of hydrogen or battery propulsion systems.
• Assessment of vehicle integration of heat pump or cooling systems with flammable refrigerant.
• Assessment of fire safety of on-track machines or 2-way vehicles according to EN 14033-series or EN 15764-series.

Services for components of rolling stock:

• Inspection of material properties including inspection report according to EN 45545-2 or NFPA130.
• Certification of inspected components by our accredited certification body according to ISO 17065.
• Assessment of heat pumps or cooling systems with flammable refrigerant.

Services for railway systems:

• Fire and evacuation simulation models for rolling stock and infrastructure.
• Assessment of incident and emergency concepts.
• Assessment of operational concepts for specific rolling stock fleets (e.g. sleeper cars) or also overall railway systems (e.g. urban rail underground lines).

Sharing our expertise with you – Trainings and workshops:

• General training for fire safety according to EN 45545 series.
• Training for material qualification according to EN 45545-2.
• Training fire risk analysis (EN 50126 / EN 60812).
• Training for incident and emergency concepts.