Fire Science Show

Do you sometimes feel that fire safety engineering is not making a footprint as it should? With all our knowledge, models, technology...why do huge fires exist? Why fire is such a threat to billions of humans? In today's episode, I'm hosting a guest who spent three decades researching what performance-based fire safety engineering is, and what it could be. And I'm not completely sure if I like the answers I got from this talk. However, based on my experience of 17 interviews with world-class fire scientists I confirm - Brian has a great point in seeking the breakthrough in a change on how we perceive fire safety.

It is a socio-technical system. A part of a much larger system of the built environment. If we don't learn how to treat it as such a system, if we continue to live in our silo separated from the rest of the engineering branches, there is not much that can change.

This is an important episode. It does not give you easy wins or short answers. But it certainly provokes you to think about what role do you play in the big picture. And to realize that, I reckon it is worth an hour of your time.

Learn more about Brian at his webpage:
https://meachamassociates.com/
or connect through LinkedIn

Brian is currently the Chairman of the IAFSS and past President of SFPE. Are you a member of these organizations? If not, maybe you should! Learn more at:
https://www.iafss.org/
https://www.sfpe.org/home

Here are some chosen papers by Brian, illustrating how his concepts evolved over time:

• (1999) International experience in the development and use of performance-based fire safety design methods: Evolution, current situation and thoughts for the future
• (2005) Performance-based building regulation: Current situation and future needs
• (2010) Accommodating innovation in building regulation: Lessons and challenges
• (2013) Twenty years of performance-based fire protection design: Challenges faced and a look ahead
• (2018) A socio-technical system framework for risk-informed performance-based building regulation

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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 plenty of fire engineers who think they are modelling human behaviour... Some claim they can do it... And there is very, very few who actually did and succeeded with it. One of them is today's guest, Dr Erica Kuligowski of RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. After two decades of groundbreaking research at NIST, Erica has moved to Australia to seek new challenges related primarily to the mass evacuation of people during bushfire events.  She presents her unique views on modelling human behaviour, but in a vastly more complex way than we consider in buildings.
 
How risk perception threshold impacts when people choose to evacuate?
What mode of transport do they pick?
What interim travels do they take?
Where do they go?
Where do they stay when reaching their target?

These are just a few of the questions a modeller has to answer, and we will try to find out how Erica handles them within her modelling.

If you think this episode will be helpful only to wildfire scientists, you are very wrong. The concepts here are groundbreaking, and if such modelling enters the mainstream, we will soon use the same concepts and ideas in buildings. So, listen carefully; this is our future.

Connect with Erica at:
https://twitter.com/ericakul
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-kuligowski-25261436/

Check the awesome WUINITY project:
https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/Wildland-Urban-Interface/WUINITY-a-platform-for-the-simulation-of-wildland-urban-interface-fire-evacuation
And read the WUINITY paper.

--- Useful links ---

• *new* Modelling evacuation of Kincade fire
• Modelling Household Evacuation Behaviour during Bushfires, presented by Dr Erica Kuligowski - Webinar
• Chimney Tops 2 fire paper
• Calibrating wildfire decision model
• Decision making in wildfires - Erica's position paper

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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.

Engineered timber is on a trajectory to become the construction material of the future. However, on that pathway there stands the fire issue. Wood burns, it is inevitable. This is something we must accept, and learn to work around. Common approach – determination of a char profile and the “healthy” section has its limitations, especially when applied to CLT products in which one could expect the glue line failure. And all of this is the topic of my todays discussion with Dr Danny Hopkin of OFR Consultants. Danny did his PhD on the subject of timber in fire and has participated in multiple interesting research projects on this topic. He is currently working with the Structural Timber Association on a STA-SIG CLT project on unravelling the fire behaviour of CLT, with its experimental part carried at the ITB in Poland.

If you would like to learn more about the STA-SIG CLT project, please visit the project website at:
https://www.structuraltimber.co.uk/sectors/clt-special-interest-group

Or read the introduction to the project by Dr Danny Hopkin.

Very quick and critical reading material:
STA-SIG CLT group - Compliance Road-map for the Structural Fire Safety Design of Mass Timber Buildings in England
A. Law - Burnout means burnout

Connect with Dr Danny Hopkin at:
https://twitter.com/DannyHopkin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannyjhopkin/
[email protected]

--- Useful links ---

This talk was a goldmine of resources, and here are all of them (I hope I did not miss out on something!)

Ronquillo G., Hopkin D., Spearpoint M., Review of large-scale fire tests on cross-laminated timber
Hopkin D., Anatsasov S., Brandon D., Reviewing the veracity of a zone-model-based-approach for the assessment of enclosures formed of exposed CLT
Hopkin D., Schmid J., Friquin K.L. Timber structures subject to non-standard fire exposure - Advances & challenges

Wegrzynski W. et al., The discrepancies in energy balance in furnace testing, a bug or a feature?

CROSS UK Cross-laminated timber (CLT) in multi-storey buildings
CROSS UK The risk of collapse of multi-storey CLT buildings during a fire
Angus Law and Luke Bisby, The rise and rise of fire resistance, Fire Safety Journal
We need to talk about timber - Angus Law gives the lecture for IStructE
Angus Law and Rory Hadden - We need to talk about timber

Wiesner F. et al. Structural capacity in fire of laminated timber elements in compartments with exposed timber surfaces

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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.

When you think about battling wildfires, what is the image you see in front of your eyes? Probably an air tanker (at least that was what I saw...). After this interview, your optics will change about 180 degrees. Dr Cathelijne Stoof explained to me why strategies focused ultimately on fire resistance and suppression are deemed to fail, and why we need to learn to manage the risks in our forests. Through a combination of landscape management, efficient ground firefighting, aerial support and social campaigns we can achieve safety from the threat, that seems more imminent than ever before.

But the discussion is not only about the politics and tactics. It is also about diversity, human aspect of fire science and social constructs that highly impact the fire risks. It is about a fascinating journey, for which dr Stoof has taken 15 (sic!) PhD students scattered all over the world, trained in over two dozen scientific units, who will be the foundation for the new generation of interdisciplinary fire experts.

PyroLife as a project has some ambitious goals and sets a new benchmark on career management, interdisciplinary research and research communication. It is focused on moving the paradigm from fire resistance to fire resilience, through risk quantification, management and communication. This part of project description summarizes it the best: 

"PyroLife is built upon four axes of diversity: interdisciplinarity, intersectorality, geography, and gender.  Its unique integrated training program provides 15 early stage researchers the in-depth, interdisciplinary, integrated and transferable knowledge and skills required to successfully complete their research projects and maximize their future employability. In a field that is still male-dominated, PyroLife is characterized by strong female participation not just as a gender equity goal but as a strategy to stimulate creativity and changing the way that fire is approached, moving from fire resistance to landscape resilience, and fostering community resilience with participatory approaches."

Please learn more about the Pyrolife ITN project at:
PyroLife project website

and connect at: 

• PyroLife Twitter 
• Cathelijne's Twitter 

Some supplementary items to our discussion can be found at:

• Diversity helps fight wildfires
• The role of fire in UK peatland and moorland management: the need for informed, unbiased debate
• Prescribed burning in southern Europe: Developing fire management in a dynamic landscape
  
  

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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.

Evacuation modelling is paramount in accounting for the human aspect in our fire modelling. But how is it developing? Where are we with our tools, and where are we heading with them? What are the most profound challenges related to the evacuation modelling?

To answer these questions I have invited two renowned experts on evacuation modelling.
Professor Enrico Ronchi from Lund University in Sweden and Professor Ruggiero 'Rino' Lovreglio from Massey University in New Zealand. 

Together we try to figure out how fundamental the fundamental diagrams are, and should they be so fundamental? We discuss the emerging trends and technologies - AR and VR in research and training, smart readiness of buildings and new modes of communication. We also touch on the role of modelling and how it should evolve in the future. The episode also touches on CFD-Evacuation coupling, wildfire evacuation and informal settlements. A real action-packed episode filled with useful ideas and information.

If you wish to connect with my guests, you can find them at:
Enrico Ronchi: 
https://twitter.com/Enrico_Evac
https://www.linkedin.com/in/enrico-ronchi-74855a12/

Ruggiero Lovreglio:
https://twitter.com/r_lovreglio
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruggiero-rino-lovreglio-75a61659/

And the 'Evacuation Modelling' feeds:
https://twitter.com/EvacuationModel

Some of the research mentioned in the episode can be found here:

• Augmented reality for pedestrian evacuation research: Promises and limitations by Lovreglion and Kinateder
• Dissuasive exit signage for building fire evacuation by Olander et al.
• A pre-evacuation database for use in egress simulations by Lovreglio et al.
• WUI-NITY: a platform for the simulation of wildland-urban interface fire evacuation
• Mobile-powered head-mounted displays versus cave automatic virtual environment experiments for evacuation research by Ronchi et al.

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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.

Have you ever wondered who truly has the most power over the fire safety of a building? In my opinion, the answer is very simple - the Architect. This is due to two reasons. First is that the architect can affect the building shape, size, compartmentation, location of the openings in the building - things that are fundamental to the compartment fire dynamics. The second reason is that they make the decisions at the most infant stage of the building construction. When everything is reversible, and when some of the most prominent decisions are taken.

Creating a fire-safe architecture, especially when you are a global company, is not easy. This is why I have invited Benjamin Ralph - the head of fire safety at the Forster+Partners architectural office, one of the "STARchitect" offices designing the most interesting buildings in the world. In the episode, we  talk about the challenges related to working in a global village, the drivers of fire safety and the role of fire safety and other competing objectives in shaping the modern buildings.

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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.

Have you ever wondered how is a fire of a match or candle different from a wildfire? Or maybe rather, why is it different? What is it, that makes the fires at different scales behave in such a different manner? What are the phenomena that drive these fires, and are these the same phenomena across the scales? These are the questions I had in mind when starting the interview with a rising star of Wildfire Science – Dr Sara McAllister of the USDA Forest Service.

Together with Sara we go into a journey across the scales of fire phenomena, discussing what are the key phenomena at particular scales. From matchsticks, through cribs and compartment fires, to wildfires and megafires – probably the most comprehensive discussion on the scales of fire phenomena I’ve ever had. From this episode you will also learn a lot about burning down wood cribs and about the LOF&BE initiative within the International Association for Fire Safety Science.

Learn more about Sara at:

https://www.firelab.org/profile/mcallister-sara

Connect with Sara at LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-mcallister-90b76917/

 LOF&BE group of IAFSS:
https://iafss.org/lofbe-webinar-series/

--- LinkedIn discussion ---

 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fire-science-show_014-a-joyrney-through-the-scales-of-fire-activity-6833641588724432896-ZEhW

--- Useful links ---

The groundbreaking paper on role of convective heat transfer in the spread of wildfires:

https://www.pnas.org/content/112/32/9833

Prof. Rein explaining why it is a breakthrough:

https://www.pnas.org/content/112/32/9795

Videos of the experiments:

https://movie-usa.glencoesoftware.com/video/10.1073/pnas.1504498112/video-1

https://movie-usa.glencoesoftware.com/video/10.1073/pnas.1504498112/video-2

https://movie-usa.glencoesoftware.com/video/10.1073/pnas.1504498112/video-3

Papers on wood cribs:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10694-015-0536-4

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10694-015-0543-5

1000 MW fire experiment:

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/61/7/1520-0477_1980_061_0682_iavawa_2_0_co_2.xml

Our paper summarizing the research on wildfires and the role of wind in wildfire spread:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10694-018-0748-5

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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.

We are living in a kind of weird time, where the most complex tool we have is at the same time the most commonly used (and abused one). The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling has brought us amazing capabilities in solving the flows within fires. But this power comes at a price - knowledge, resources, time... Sometimes we lack some of these (or all) and we turn the power tool into a generator of beautiful images that are hardly any representation of the physics of the fire...

In this episode with Dr Wolfram Jahn, we go deep into the application of the CFD in fire science and engineering, searching for the boundary at which the CFD stops being the right tool for the job. From the evolution of our models, through the choice of meshes and boundary conditions, up to the workflow of the CFD modelling, we touch the important choices the engineers do every day. Focusing on the practical side of the issue, we try to figure out the best advice we can give to the engineers, on how to use the CFD in the most reliable (and correct) way.

Connect with Wolfram Jahn at:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wolframjahn/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/wolfris
ResearchGate - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wolfram-Jahn-2

--- LinkedIn Discussion thread ---
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fire-science-show_episode-13-on-the-use-and-abuse-of-cfd-activity-6831120537499025408--nvl

--- Usefull links ---

FDS download (make sure to check the example cases and the Verification & Validation guide!!!) - https://pages.nist.gov/fds-smv/downloads.html

Benjamin Ralph on V&V of FDS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipnGrAeG5zw

Summer School on FDS modelling at Juelich Forszungszentrum 
https://www.fz-juelich.de/ias/ias-7/EN/Research/Fire_Dynamics/Events/SummerSchool2019/_node.html

Dalmarnock paper (simulations before the experiment) - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0379711209000034?via%3Dihub

Dalmarnock paper (simulations after the experiment) -  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036013231000332X?via%3Dihub

50 years of Computational Wind Engineering - a view on the world of the CFD through a wind engineering eyes - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016761051400052X

Wegrzynski & Tofiło - Hand calculations, zone models and CFD – areas of disagreement and limits of application in practical fire protection engineering @ SFPE Warsaw 2016 
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305808429_Hand_calculations_zone_models_and_CFD_-_areas_of_disagreement_and_limits_of_application_in_practical_fire_protection_engineering

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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 this episode, I had the pleasure and privilege to host dr Kees Both, the Technical Manager of Standards & Regulations in Etexgroup. Kees wanted to become a suspension bridge engineer, but his route went through a fire lab, and as he said - once you go into a fire lab, there is no way out. From a scientist, he has "evolved" into a research manager, project manager and someone, who has a significant impact on the shape of the standards and legislation in Europe.  Kees is also the former President of SFPE Europe.

Due to his unique background, I've asked Kees some important questions related to the state of modern fire science, industrial research and development and legislation. We (attempt to) focus our discussion on how these puzzles play together, and how people representing these roles can and should interact... but we also venture into the wonderful world of tunnel fire safety, obtaining funds for major research projects in EU and how to educate the new generation of fire technicians and engineers. Also, why do pubs play a critical role in fostering healthy discussions between fire safety professionals?

This was certainly one of the most fun discussions I've had in a while, and I hope you will enjoy it as well. Even though it may not have a direct impact on your everyday work or research, the matters brought up in this talk will definitely affect your future in one way or another.  The importance of passion in fire engineering and being open to other professionals, also these representing completely different roles, is critical for building a fire safe world, together.

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LinkedIn Discussion Thread:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fire-science-show_environment-innovation-research-activity-6828586364817203200-Q28i

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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.

What is the single most measured thing in fire science? The answer is easy - temperature. We use it everywhere - from learning material properties in TGA's to expressing conditions in compartment fires. We use it at the same time to define exposure conditions for our structures and the acceptance criteria within them. We even use it in evacuation studies to define the tenability criteria for occupants... We measure temperature. Everywhere and all the time.

But is it really the thing we are looking for? Often temperature measurements become a proxy for heat transfer or energy balance problems, which in many cases are the things that we are looking for. In this episode, I'm going to talk about the wonderful world of heat transfer in fires, temperature measurements and its role in Fire Science and Fire Safety Engineering. In the end, I will give you four pieces of advice on how to improve the understanding of what you are measuring, so hopefully, you will stay with me till the end!

--- LinkedIn discussion thread ---
 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fire-science-show_011-why-temperature-is-so-easy-to-measure-activity-6826039859526856704-Np2T 

--- Useful links ---

Papers mentioned in the episode:
J. Torero, A. Law, C. Maluk - Defining the thermal boundary condition for protective structures in fire: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0141029616311841
E. Rackauskaite - Improved travelling fires methodology (PhD thesis) https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/52917
M. Heidari, P. Kotsovinos, G. Rein - Flame extension and the near field (...) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/fam.2773
M. Beshir et al. - Semi-empirical model for estimating the heat release rate required for flashover (...) thermally-thin boundaries (...) - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0379711220300862?via%3Dihub

Incropera's Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Fundamentals+of+Heat+and+Mass+Transfer%2C+8th+Edition-p-ES81119320425
U. Wickstrom - Temperature Calculation in Fire Safety Engineering https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319301709

J. Toreros lecture 5 at Princeton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdNGV9jYAU0
(the whole course: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbInEHTmP9VZjxk0XxzflwUwbCTqzcI_w)



 

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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.