Fire Science Show

I have to start with a word of warning, I am extremally hyped about this and upcoming episodes. I think for the first time I have recorded a podcast episode with a ratio of my commentary to the guest 1:5. This is because when you get Prof. David Purser to tell you about toxicology, there is not much to add. It is a story of the history of fire science, difficult discoveries and how a fire scientist had to combine knowledge from multiple fields into useful models. All of this is so that engineers like us won't break their heads trying to cope with the chemistry of fires, but can rely on sound models and simplification which make our professional judgement possible (I won't call it easy...).

Please join me in celebrating Prof Pursers' achievements, including his IAFSS'14 Emmons Plenary Lecture invitation - the biggest honour a fire scientist can achieve. In this episode, you will learn about the differences between material toxicity and toxicity of fires, and how that changed from the 1950s to modern times. You will learn how we have established some rules on the toxic effects of smoke and how the research on this was performed. You will also learn what the FED model is and how it came to life.

This is Part 1 of the interview. In Part 2 (next week) you will learn more about asphyxiant and irritant gasses, specific molecules that are created in fire smoke and how this knowledge translates to engineering projects. Can't wait for that one too...

If somehow, you want more. There is more. I highly recommend reading David's chapters in the SFPE Handbook, as they are the most condensed pill of knowledge and references on toxicity that you can find anywhere. Here are the links:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4939-2565-0_62

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4939-2565-0_63

----
The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

It is the newest Internet craze. In my opinion, maybe even be the most disruptive tech since bitcoin or the Internet itself. And suddenly, we got a lot of very interesting conversations around, but I've lacked on oriented on the craft of Fire Protection Engineering.

I'm obviously talking about generative AI and "chatbots". If you don't know this term, you should definitely read OFRs paper on that in recent SFPE Europe! 

Discussions on chatbots are in abundance, but people having first-hand experience are scarce. I was lucky enough to find one, dr Michael Kinsey during his time in ARUP China was leading the development of tools, including a responsive "chat-bot" to read Chinese fire code. Here we talk about the opportunities and struggles they have encountered. It was not exactly "GPT" style chatbot, but one that follows a very similar logic and similar user experience. Plus, you have to admit - Mike did chatbots before they were cool!

Tune in to hear how this tech may disrupt our space and if there is a future for us in it (spoiler - there is).

----
The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

In the fifth episode of mini-series 'Experiments that changed fire science' we cover the compartment fire experimental campaigns carried at NBS (now NIST) in 1970's and 1980's, with the maybe most famous of them all - the Steckler's room experiment. My guest - prof. James Quintiere touches on the experimental design, design choices and most importantly - the technology available to measure and how they made it work.

If you would like to read more on this science, start up with these pieces

• Stecklers room experiment paper
• Corridor fires
• Wall fires and upward flame spread

----
The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

It's finally here, the episode many of you were waiting for! Discussing the history of US fire movement with prof. James Quintiere from the University of Maryland.

I often wondered what it felt like in the 1970's and 80's when some of the greatest discoveries of fire science were made. I mean discoveries like the instabilities that lead to flashover, the role of radiant heat transfer in compartment fire dynamics or the definition of the flows through openings... things so fundamental to us today, that we maybe sometimes forget that someone had first to discover and describe them. This is what I've tried to learn from prof. Quintiere, had an enormous impact on the research carried in the US in that period, and was also one of the key people fostering international collaboration and exchange of experience. These are the elements of today's story. There is no point in explaining more of the episode contents, you should simply tune into what James has to say!

Keep your eyes open, next week we will run a second episode with prof. Quintiere, this time with more of the technicalities of the experiments carried at NBS in his time there! 

Episode artwork image credit - NIST Digital Archives, read the story of fire testing at NIST here https://www.nist.gov/feature-stories/trial-fire-look-nist-fire-testing-through-years

----
The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

It seems we will not have EU Fire Code for at least a few more decades... Why is that? Because the people in power found out that it is not the most efficient thing to do it right now. And they found it through the power of research carried out by the European Commissions Joint Research Centre. I have invited Dr Adamantia Athanasopoulou from JCR to talk about their most recent report on the state of fire engineering (or performance-based fire engineering) in Europe, and it turned out to be a discussion also on how the law is created and spread in the EU and what can we do with the knowledge we've found.

If you would like to learn more about the findings of the JCR, they the report is available at their website: https://eurocodes.jrc.ec.europa.eu/publications/status-and-needs-implementation-fire-safety-engineering-approach-europe

(or you can just use this direct link)
 http://eurocodes.jrc.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2023-01/JRC131689_01.pdf

----
The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

Welcome to Fire Fundamentals pt. 2 with Rory Hadden. This episode is focused on the concept of ignition and its role in fire safety - as an event leading to fires, as something often investigated post-fire, but also as a vehicle to understand and measure general concepts of flammability of materials.

In this episode we cover:

• ignition of gases, liquids and solids
• flammability limits
• flashpoint and fire point
• open and closed cup methods for ignition of liquids
• a little bit of pyrolysis and heat transfer

Hope you enjoy this mini-series - more of those will be coming!

----
The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

1 year. 

This is insane the war is still going on and people are still hurt. This war in Ukraine significantly affected everyone in here, and in this episode, I get a chance to share some of my thoughts and background to the story (at least from my perspective). The story of this episode is that professor Dix was visiting Poland, and he was absolutely astonished by the situation here which did not match his expectations. On the conference he went literally 'I need to interview you on what is happening in here', and I'm always carrying a mic you know :). So this was a very spontaneous interview, completely unplanned and unprepared - just the state of the heart at that particular point in time. I guess it makes it a bit genuine, maybe a bit overdrawn in some points, but still a snapshot of how I feel about the things being discussed.

I know many friends from outside of Poland are curious about first-hand reports, so here is my attempt on telling you my story. I'm not exceptionally courageous or generous - we've just sacrificed a bit of our comfort. There were and are people in Poland who do A LOT more. People who really sacrificed a lot, and I hope their stories get shared and collected too.

Thanks to all for supporting Ukraine. Thanks to all for supporting us. I hope the war ends soon...

----
The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

If you want to design a suppression system for a certain application, you have a lot of technical solutions to choose from and most likely a handful of codes to follow. It seems pretty straightforward for most applications, right? Well, it certainly was not like this for my today's guest and his application. The guest is Ulf Lundström of the Swedish Road Administration and his application was for road tunnels. But it is not that he just needed a sprinkler for that - he had a very specific section parameter in mind, limited water availability and precise expectations towards the system use and maintenance. Something that did not exist on the market. In normal cases, customers and lawmakers would not agree to not follow the book, and Ulf would have to adjust his expectations... But being the administration - the law and a customer - he had the privilege to just try and build up a system for his needs.

And boy, he did just that.

This is an odd story. A story of someone thinking purely in performance-based objectives, willing to accept the shortcomings of his technology as long as his primary goals are met. He is someone who has placed a lot of faith in fire science and believed that through careful testing and experimenting they can get the exact solution he is looking for. And someone, who truly succeeded with this, and his tech is now present not only in his tunnels but available worldwide.

You can read about the developed system here:
- https://tunnelingonline.com/new-system-developed-combat-tunnel-fires/
- Water sprays and spillage in tunnels - full report
- Large Scale Tunnel Fire Tests with Large Droplet Water-Based Fixed Fire Fighting System - research paper
- System presented to Polish professionals in 2019

Fire Science Show is sponsored by OFR Consultants.

OFR Consultants is a multi-award-winning independent consultancy dedicated to addressing fire safety challenges. OFR is the UK’s leading fire risk consultancy. Its globally established team has developed a reputation for pre-eminent fire engineering expertise, with colleagues working across the world to help protect people, property, and the planet. 

 Established in the UK in 2016 as a start-up business of two highly experienced fire engineering consultants, the business has grown phenomenally in just six years with offices across the country in seven locations – from Edinburgh to Bath. Colleagues are on a mission to continually explore the challenges that fire creates for clients and society, applying the best research, experience and diligence for effective tailored solutions.

----
The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

There is no universal answer to the question of how law and testing regimes should be set up. Sometimes, we build up our law after a huge tragedy, making sure that the same cause will not be of harm in the future. Sometimes, we act proactively, trying to build robust solutions so that all foreseen threats are minimized... But it is never without a flaw. And even if the system is flawless, one can hardly expect today's solutions to answer the problems of the future world.  But we need those laws, tests and methods in place, so how to create them in the best way? This is the theme of today's episode with Birgitte Messerschmidt. We venture through the creation and emergence of the Single Burning Item method (read more in this report) and reaction to fire Euro-classes. The challenges they were supposed to solve (and largely solved), as well as aspects that went out of the scope of this new ladder. It is an amazingly rich case study, filled with a bit of out-of-science issues like fighting for power, maintaining the status quo within some nations or maybe even simple lobbying (which you can read more about in this amazing paper).

What we hope to achieve with this talk is to make engineers reflect a bit more on the applicability of the test methods used every day to ran products. From understanding differences between material, assembly and product tests to questioning if a method is truly representative of the end use of the tested product, and is the threat is representative of the conditions the product will be exposed to. It is not about a revolution and tearing down existing codes and rules, but curiosity and a science-driven quest to ensure, that what we know is the fire characteristics of products installed in our buildings.

This is not the first Fire Science Show episode with doubts about the system. These talks are difficult, and I would also like to highlight:

• 029 Busses, flammability and an unknown force holding good solutions back... with Anja Hofmann-Böllinghaus
• 038 Fire resistance is not always enough for timber with Daniel Brandon
• 070 Fire resistance is whatever you want it to be with Piotr Turkowski

and for the very end, one recent episode with Ruben van Coile, where a decent pathway forward is presented. Btw. Ruben is currently recruiting for this project. Lemme know if you are interested and I can connect you!

Fire Science Show is sponsored by OFR Consultants.

OFR Consultants is a multi-award-winning independent consultancy dedicated to addressing fire safety challenges. OFR is the UK’s leading fire risk consultancy. Its globally established team has developed a reputation for pre-eminent fire engineering expertise, with colleagues working across the world to help protect people, property, and the planet. 

 Established in the UK in 2016 as a start-up business of two highly experienced fire engineering consultants, the business has grown phenomenally in just six years with offices across the country in seven locations – from Edinburgh to Bath. Colleagues are on a mission to continually explore the challenges that fire creates for clients and society, applying the best research, experience and diligence for effective tailored solutions.

----
The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

Modelling ignition and fire of a tree branch with some leaves can't be that much different from modelling burning timber, right? Well, that is the kind of ignorance that can backfire on you... It certainly did on me! I have honestly not imagined how complicated fires of living (and dead) vegetation may be. How different heat transfer phenomena will have the leading impact (convective heating and cooling!) and how some of the assumptions I'm very used to may be useless. I guess I should have paid more attention to the episodes with Sara McAllister and Mike Gollner!

Anyway, today I'm treating my ignorance with the best cure I know - talking to an expert, who really knows his craft. This guest is Dr Eric Mueller from NIST, who has done his PhD at Edinburgh on modelling natural fuels, and now continues this research at NIST. Eric is responsible not only for researching this field, but also implementing and improving models and routines of FDS that relate to natural fuels. As such, he is a priceless knowledge resource. In this episode, you will learn a lot about convective heat transfer, porosities and drag coefficients - some concepts that were a little alien to me before... at least not at the level of importance that I would assign to them now. So if you feel you may learn this and that about burning living fuels, please join me in this episode. And if you feel it is useless... well yeah, thought the same and got reality checked pretty hard on this! 

If you somehow missed it, make sure to check the video from IAFSS20 where Eric received the best thesis award, and astonished everyone with his magnificent presentation. It is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHif1bh5o2g

----
The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.