Critical velocity is a very important parameter in smoke control of tunnel fires and the variation of critical velocity against fire heat release rate is also one of the most important issues in tunnel fire researches. In this paper, a simplified physical model of a tunnel was established and the predictions of critical velocity for fire sizes in the 5-100MW range were carried out by FDS simulations. The FDS-predicted dimensionless critical velocities were compared with the values calculated by Wu and Bakar’s model. The result indicated that when the heat release rate was relatively small, Q≤30MW, the critical velocity increased with the increasing of heat release rate and varied as the one-third power of the heat release rate; when Q≥40MW, the growth rate of critical velocity became very small; after Q reach to 60MW, the critical velocity was almost unchanged with the increasing of heat release rate. In addition, the values of critical velocity calculated by Wu and Bakar’model which was derived from small-scale gas fire tests were underestimated. Therefore, the model suggested by Wu and Bakar is not suitable for critical velocity prediction in tunnel fires.