Although the number of medium-length road tunnels, less than 1 km in length, has increased recently more than 30 percent each year, their ventilation and fire safety system design guidelines have not been established yet. The guidelines for long tunnel design are adopted even for the medium-length road tunnels. Therefore the necessity is brought up to optimize the ventilation and fire safety systems based on their own design guidelines. This study aims at determining the optimal start time of jet fan in case of 20 MW fires by analyzing smoke backlayering range, temperature distribution, range of poor visibility, evacuation time and critical velocity. The CFD study results are expected to contribute to propose the optimal fan operation mode.