Fire Science Show

What makes an experiment truly groundbreaking, and how can researchers plan and execute such experiments in fire science? Join us as we chat with Professor Arnaud Trouve from the University of Maryland, a co-chair of the MaCFP group at the IAFSS, to uncover the answers to these burning questions. Arnaud offers valuable insights into the creation of a structured, repeatable, and accessible database of knowledge, and how to design experiments that will revolutionize fire science.

We dive into the challenges of gathering data from manufacturers who don't share their information and the difficulties in modelling phenomena like underventilated fires, flame spread, radiation and soot. Arnaud also emphasizes the importance of well-controlled, well-instrumented experiments in fire research, and the need for computer power to solve fundamental problems in fire science. Moreover, we discuss the MaCFP Workshop and the three different solvers that make up a fire model, touching on the importance of IAFSS's endorsement of MaCFP and the resources available to access the discussions from past workshops.

The main MaCFP repository can be found here and the GitHub here.

----
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.

Ever wondered how scale modelling can provide invaluable insights into fire science? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Professor James Quintiere, as we delve into the fascinating world of scale modelling and its applications in both fire science and fluid mechanics research. You will discover how this powerful experimental technique has been used to develop correlations, understand complex phenomena, and even predict outcomes of full-scale experiments.

Together with prof. Quintiere we go from plume research to exploring the potential of scale modelling in investigative fire science, touching on its role in understanding smoke movement, pressurization effects, and venting strategies in buildings. Learn how a deep understanding of the underlying physics can lead to successful scale modelling, and how this technique can complement modern computational tools like CFD.

For resources:

• Scaling realistic fire scenarios paper
• Scale modelling in fire reconstruction (a book) and a direct link
• WTC scale modelling

And for simply some fun - the mentioned Mercedes-Benz museum smoke control - designed with scale modelling!

----
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 all agree competencies are key to fire safety. We have discussed this. We have argued about this. We have come up with decent sets of core competencies, course curricula and numerous courses and modules that help us be competent in what we are doing. This podcast is to keep me and you competent in what we are doing.

But this is insufficient in the modern world. Because it is not just us who need to be competent. Today I've invited Dr Michael Woodrow from UCL to talk about what fire competencies mean for FSEs and for other stakeholders in the design process, with a very very strong emphasis on the architects. What is the difference between an architect that understands the fundamentals of fire safety, and one that wants to complete a box-ticking exercise?  What those fundamentals actually are for someone who is not (and is not expected to be) an FSE? And how the changing UK post-Grenfell environment makes this discussion today more relevant than ever.

You need to listen to this episode and share it with your architect friends. And once you are done with it, you are probably interested in all this Fire Safe Design MArch discussed in the show. Here it is!

And while we are searching for great resources, here is Michael's paper on competencies, enjoy.

----
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 Society of Fire Protection Engineers? I just got a really good answer from the Interim CEO Chris Jeleniwicz. It is our profession. It is us.

With this important definition sorted, we dig into what SFPE is doing (and more importantly - how it is doing). If you ever wondered what the SFPE Handbook writing process looks like and what will you find in the next edition, we may have some answers for you. If you wonder why SFPE is turning its guidelines into standards and how this future ecosystem will work - tune in. What is the role of the SFPE Foundation and how SFPE participates in building fire science? And by the way, you will also find out how society builds a holistic system of competencies, curricula, courses and educational resources.

I'm deeply connected with SFPE for many years, and it gave me a lot of joy to hear about the plans of CJ in how to guide this organization to success. And by the way, this success is OUR success, as SFPE is us.

If you would like to learn more about the history of SFPE, please check this website and the brilliant paper by David Lucht.

SFPE Events can be found here.

If you are interested in the activities of the SFPE Foundation, learn more here.

Fire Science Show is brought to you in partnership with OFR Consultants. 

----
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.

This week we cover the fundamentals of smoke flow (proliferation!), entrainment and smoke plumes. All the basics that impact the spread of the smoke in our buildings. You will learn:

• the ideal gas assumption for a smoke mixture
• turbulent nature of fire-induced flows
• axisymmetric plume models and their origins
• spill plumes
• window and door plumes
• basics of smoke control

If you would like to read up more, please resort to:

• Review of plume models
• Enclosure Fire Dynamics - Karlsson, Quntiere, Johansson
• Fluid Mechanics Aspects of Fire and Smoke Dynamics in Enclosures - Merci and Beji
• Probably the best thing about visibility in smoke I ever did

This podcast is brought to you in collaboration with OFR Consultants.
Thank you for sticking up to Fire Science Show for its 100th episode!!!

----
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.

Do you have any idea how bad the tunnel fire will be if there is an EV involved?

That is a question I hear a lot, way more often than I would like. And usually, my answers do not get approval. I guess telling people "doesn't matter, passenger vehicles are not a concern" does not rank very well against all the media chaos related to challenges with these new energy carriers. Even today I've witnessed a random conversation of my father with a friend, where they discussed the future, EVs and how bad they may be in fires. It is hard to break through with some of the messages. Unfortunately, for those simple and reasonable claims, we need extraordinary proof.

Luckily, there are people who bring those proofs to us, so we finally can not only participate in meetings armed with data but also refer the peer-reviewed research and close the arguments. My today's hero is Prof. Peter Sturm from TU Graz, the leader in the BRAFA project on fires with new energy carriers (more about the project here). In their recent paper Fire tests with lithium-ion battery electric vehicles in road tunnels, they dive deep into fires of EVs in a road tunnel setting. We discuss why this setting is important to understand the consequences of the fire in the tunnel environment, and how their main conclusions were reached. You will also learn some about the new methods of extinguishing fires, as working alongside the firefighters was an important part of this project. Finally, in the podcast episode, we discuss how the results of this research may scale to larger vehicles, and what the consequences of low-probability high-consequence events such as an electrical bus fire may be.

If you would like to learn more about the crazy research facility Zentrum am Berg, you can do that here: https://www.zab.at/

Cover image by TU Graz, Lunghammer, reproduced from 10.1016/j.firesaf.2022.10369

Fire Science Show is produced in partnership with OFR Consultants.

----
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.

This week in place of a normal episode I would like to share an interview I gave to my friend Kevin Sofen in his podcast. In this episode I am interviewed by Kevin on the science of fire, how I understand the built environment and the challenges it brings. Kevin asks me some really tough questions, like what the fire-safe world is, and how to innovate in space of the fire engineering. I have highly enjoyed this discussion, and if you have not heard it at the Smart Firefighting Podcast, I hope you will enjoy it as well here!

This podcast episode is the original  content of the Smart Firefight Podcast, which was originally posted here: https://www.smartfirefighting.com/podcast/episode/351c46ad/episode-151-playing-with-fire-to-create-a-fire-safe-world-with-wojciech-wegrzynski

The episode is posted with the approval from Kevin, thank you so much for making this interview available for the Fire Science Show audience!

----
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.

Innovation is a big world. A digital innovation sounds even bigger. But it is in fact our reality - we live in a world of constant change and "improvements". Many of those come to us in form of digital technologies, information processing or simply computer codes and tools. And I would say more often than not, these are not very helpful... If you share this point of view with me, you will rejoice in this podcast episode.

I have invited Michael Strömgren who is the Chief Innovation Officer at BRIAB to discuss his long experience with experimenting with the newest digital trends in the construction market. While investigating BIM, digital twins, IoT sensors and machine-interpreted codes we try to seek the reason why the construction industry is improving its efficiency only by 1-2% a year, and how those new tools and technologies could break the paradigm. Why we need to communicate more, and how the new tools allow for that. Finally, why systematic thinking is the way forward in the new 'normal' of modern civil engineering.

This podcast episode is produced with the support of OFR Consultants, the diamond sponsor of the Fire Science Show.

----
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.

This episode is the 2nd part of interview with Professor David Purser, this year recipient of IAFSS'14 Emmons Plenary Lecture. If you have not seen it, I would highly encourage you to first listen to the Part 1, which sets the context of the discussion here.

In Part 1 we have talked a lot about the toxic hazards and how the production of toxicants has evolved together with fire loads. We have also gone quite deep into the toxicity of CO. In part 2, we cover the combined effects of asphyxiant gases and some of the HCN toxicity. We also distinguish between asphyxiants and irritants, discussing in depth how each of those work on the human body, and what are the physiological and pathological consequences of exposure. We also go quite deep into how tests on animals were carried, in consequence - what we know about the effects of these toxicants on the human body (and what we just assume...). We finish the episode with quite an engineering take on building useful models and progressing the toxicology further.

These two episodes. Seriously, maybe it is just me, but I feel this is some sort of pinnacle of how informative an informal chat in a podcast may be. I have just learnt more about toxicology than in 13 years of my professional career and in my formal education (maybe it was just bad, dunno...). Please apologize me if I am over-hyping this, but I am absolutely thankful to David for spending some of his time with me and teaching me all of this. I hope this will be useful for generations of fire engineers!

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.

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

----
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.

Performance-based engineering or the use of probabilistic methods in building design are not inventions of Fire Safety Engineering. But we sometimes tend to act like we need to 'discover' and work out everything on our own. I strongly believe this is not the best way forward. And certainly not the cheapest one...

Where I see a lot of potential is the adaptation of methods and models that work in other parts of civil engineering, that could act as solutions to issues related to fire. Such a case is with The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center’s Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) - brought to the fire safety engineering community by David Lange (a previous guest on the show) and Asif Usmani in 2014, and now is championed by my today's guest Dr Negar Elhami Khorasani. Negar gives us a very in-depth view of the status of Structural Fire Safety Engineering and shows an inspiring framework in which probabilistic inputs at different stages of the analysis can be used to build up a model of safety in a building, that is much more informative than whatever we assume through design with prescriptive rules. A step up from the structural fire safety engineering framework, but one that feels very smart and natural. 

The best part of this episode is reading this framework between the lines. Yes, it is adopted for structural design. But it does not have to. It can be adapted to many different areas of fire science, and in my case, we will definitely seek an implementation in wind-fire coupled modelling. So, no matter if you are dealing with the most impressive structural designs crafted for fire, or if it is something not very relevant to your current tasks, please have an open mind and try to understand the workflow and ideas behind this framework, it seems really worth it!

And here are some resources I received from Negar, that may be relevant to you, if you find this topic interesting: 

•  2014 paper by Lange et al. on the application of performance-based earthquake engineering framework to structures in fire
• 2014 paper on a probabilistic model for fire load
• 2015 and 2020 papers on probabilistic material models
• 2016 paper on fire fragility curves
• 2020 paper on probabilistic models for permanent and live loads
• 2022 on the reliability of US prescriptive standard for steel column 

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. 

----
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.

Would you rather do 20 published experiments and take your impact factors, or make one that truly changed the world of fire science? Or maybe a different way, would you pursue something that is quick, easy and gives immediate credit over something hard, stressful and requiring maybe years to really change mainstream engineering?

Sure, we all like to see ourselves as heroes, but in reality, very few of us have the courage and vision to pursue these hard-to-achieve goals. But it seems worth it. Today's episode is a statement of that. An experiment designed to investigate a single, most impactful variable. A chain of research, from small, through intermediate, to then full scale, designed with every detail in mind, to truly reveal the physics of a fire in a way we have never seen in a controlled experiment. Finally, a great finish with impactful papers, changing the standards worldwide and the tunnel fire engineering practice for decades to come.

This is what happened in the Runehammar tunnel in Norway. And I am joined today by prof. Haukur Ingason from RISE - the mastermind of this work, and dr Anders Lönnermark, also from RISE, then a PhD student tasked with assisting and processing the findings of the study. The experiments were carried out by SP (now RISE), SINTEF, TNO and industrial partners. In this episode, you will learn their path to these experiments and the environment in which this happened. You will learn how the previous experiences of my guests have been pivotal in understanding the outcomes of the test (truly, fire science is blessed with having just the right people, at the right time at the right place...). We will also try to understand the impact of this research, and dream a bit about 'how would we do this today'. And on top of that, you will learn a ton of technical details of the tests, sprinklered with a bit of tasty fire science.

If you want to learn more about these experiments, the single best piece you can find summarizing it is here.

One of the outcomes of the project is still ongoing - Haukur organized a seminar to disseminate the experimental findings, which eventually turned into the ISTSS conference series. This year, they invite you to the 10th edition of this event at Stavanger in Norway. It is a nice opportunity, as this conference happens just after Fires in Vehicles event, held at the exact same place. Learn more about the event here.

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.

If you wish to learn about the PhD opportunity at the Fire Safety Engineering Group, please follow here. You can also check the LinkedIn post in which prof. Ed Galea explains the proposition

----
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.

Three months ago I saw a video of some sort of an electric scooter going off in someone's residential building. That person had absolutely no chance of controlling that fire. I guess they have escaped, but it must have been severe fire damage to their home. Then, I listened to an excellent webinar by IFAB (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vir4_1qSSc) where for the first time I've seen useful measurements of HRR in such a fire... and they are horrifying. A fire in a range of ¬1 MW is in many cases all you need to place your compartment on a trajectory to flashover. A fire that grows that quickly means you have no chance to really react. And these devices are located in people's homes! 

To learn more about those threats, I've invited dr Adam Barowy of UL FSRI. Adam has thorough experience in testing and experimenting with these exact types of fires, and is a priceless source of knowledge on such incidents. I am not able to summarize all the amazing information shared by Adam - you really have to listen to the episode. It is absolutely worth it. But what is also worth your time, is to go through amazing UL FSRI resources:

• Online course - Fire Service Considerations with Lithium-Ion Battery ESS https://fsri.org/resource/fire-service-considerations-lithium-ion-battery-ess
• Examining the Fire Safety Hazards of Lithium-ion Battery Powered e-Mobility Devices in Homes
• The Impact of Batteries on Fire Dynamics

And the most important resource - Safety tips for devices with lithium-ion batteries

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.

If you wish to learn about the PhD opportunity at the Fire Safety Engineering Group, please follow here. You can also check the LinkedIn post in which prof. Ed Galea explains the proposition here. 

----
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 Questions & Answers session 02 covering the recent sponsorship opening in the podcast and how the podcast is turning from a hobby project to something more professional, and the summary of the 2022 listener experience survey.

In this session you can find answers to the following questions:

What does it mean to have podcast sponsorships for the podcast, the audience, me and the sponsors? 2:15
Summary of listener experience survey. 15:29
Types of content you would like to see in the show. 30:16
Direct answers to some of your comments. 37:08

----
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 my first episode, I mentioned that I'm doing this podcast to preserve some amazing conversations and share them with a larger audience, as sometimes it is a huge waste of interesting thoughts that remain just between the few people participating in a talk. This part of the podcast mission is what I'm trying to achieve with today's episode. I had the privilege to be a part of an amazing discussion between fire science giants Steve Gwynne from Movement Strategies and Mike Spearpoint from OFR, who also happen to be amazing amateur philosophers. I throw them some difficult questions on why the industry is driven to do science. How is the industry doing science? Does it differ from the world of academia? What are the metrics the industry would measure the value of research? And they give me simply amazing answers, based on their very long practical experience.

This is a little different episode than the usual fire science, but it shows a lot of 'why' we do fire science. I think understanding how and why we do science is as important as the science itself, and some of the thoughts in the episode such as that the biggest impact is entering the building code with your research or the scrutiny and reputation related to research, are just profound. I think it is critical to understand how the world of science works if we are to trust the research that comes from that world. I'm aware this episode is not for every fire engineer, but I hope that those who find it interesting will find a lot of value within it. Just as I did.

This episode is also historical, as it is the first episode created in partnership with OFR Consultants, who are the diamond sponsor of the podcast for the year 2023. Please allow me to introduce OFR to you. And you can learn more and connect with them at their website. 

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.

Let's start another mini-series! This time 'fire fundamentals' where we are going to learn some basics from the world's best. It is usually fascinating to do that! Not sure how you feel about it but I would kill for a chance to listen to the principles of fire science from Quintiere or Drysdale, even though I give these lectures on my own...

In this first episode, I've invited dr Rory Hadden - an emerging legend of fire from the University of Edinburgh, to discuss some basics of flame and combustion. We have covered the following topics:

• diffusion flame;
• flammability limits;
• role of heat transfer in solid and liquid phase fires;
• ignition sources and ignition energy;
• fire retardants;
• effects of scale in flammability;
• and the ways to measure the fire.

Quite a lot for a first lecture, and it is a little longer than the usual Fire Science Show episode, but I'm sure it is worth it. Let me know what you think about this mini-series and send me ideas for future episodes.

I also promised to link to three masterpieces you need to read as a fire engineer, these are:

• An Introduction to Fire Dynamics, Third Edition by Dougal Drysdale;
• Fundamentals of Fire Phenomena by James Quintiere;
• Enclosure fire dynamics (recently revised!) by Bjorn Karlsson and James Quintiere 

Learn more about the Fire Engineering Science MSc at the University of Edinburgh here.

----
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.

Fire science is often accelerated by tragedies. The same goes for the tools we are using and the methods we know. In the early 2000's we already had some great tools, in fact, it was the era where the paradigm of fire modelling shifted from zone models to emerging CFD (listen to episode 81 to learn more about this shift). But these new capabilities soon went through a significant test - a terrorist attack in New York, bringing two iconic skyscrapers to collapse. An overwhelming media turmoil. Can jet fuel melt steel beams? Can fire take down a skyscraper? Why both have collapsed and why in this order? And on top of that, everyone suing everyone.

To appreciate the challenge, let's contemplate the tools of that time (FDS).
You have a giant building to model - what do you do? You cut it into smaller meshes and run on multi CPU's. Easy right? Nope. Not there yet.
Defining parameters of fuel? Pyrolysis model? Nope, not really.
Transferring data out to FEM software? Ha, you wish. Go and program that from scratch.
At least you have it easy with Adiabatic Surface Temperature right? (...)

Yup, it was a very young solver given a very mature task. But they did it. They programmed what was needed to program. They used the cleverest techniques to calibrate models. They have used fire experiments to approximate the fire growth... and in the end, they achieved something they can proudly call a reconstruction of the WTC fire. All in the shadow, not talking to anyone (remember everyone suing everyone part?). I think even today this would be a massive and challenging project. But for the early 2000's it is an engineering masterpiece.

Join me and Kevin McGrattan and listen to the full story.
A summary of the inquiry is available here.
Cover image credit: https://www.nist.gov/image/wtctowerfiretest2003jpg

----
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.

Has it ever crossed your mind how would our discipline look like, if we did not have Fire Dynamics Simulator? Maybe you had an opportunity to discuss CFD with colleagues from other disciplines, to find their faces in shock and awe that the fire community actually has its own, FREE AND OPEN SOURCE, validated and fully recognized solver? A testimony to the impact of FDS may be the citation count on its user guide, which has recently exceeded 5.000 citations! The FDS code is something special and our little scientific community can feel proud that a tool of this magnitude was built just for us!

But it did not build itself. There is a history of giants paving the route with their low-Mach number approximation of Navier-Stokes. There is my today's guest - Dr Kevin McGrattan who saw the need and built the first iteration of FDS (and still leads its development 20 years later). And there is a team of brilliant scientists at NIST, VTT and other parts of the world, who shared this dream of a robust, open-access fire simulator, and volunteered their hard work into making this dream a reality.

In this podcast episode, we focus on the very early days of FDS (or even before it came to life). My mission was to learn how FDS was built, what the landscape looked like back then and how it was growing. When particular important sub-models came into existence and what triggered that. We also learn what were the goals for the tool development and how did they evolve over the years as the project got more and more serious.  You may be surprised by some very simple explanations beyond some very tough design decisions!

I hope you enjoy this episode. Please appreciate dr Kevin McGrattan and the hard work done at NIST, VTT and other places, that enabled us to have something really special. Our solver. Fine tuned for fire and open to all.

Learn more about FDS at the project website at NIST or the GitHub repository.

----
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.

Today is a great day to celebrate with Prof Ruben van Coile of Ghent University, who is most likely the first representative of Fire Safety Engineering to receive a grant within the European Research Councill Starting Grant scheme.  It is not common to celebrate a grant award this much - usually, we would wait till the work gets done and we see the effects... But not here.  ERC is something else. ERC is a place for the bravest proposals brought by the brightest minds of science. And even that does not guarantee success when you have to pass 9-12 independent reviewers and a multiple-stage recruitment process... But it seems to be worth it. A five-year funding scheme that allows a truly grand design to be pursued.

And this exactly is the case with the framework proposed by prof. van Coile. He is not the first one to recognize we need a new foundation stone for fire safety, but he surely is one of those who give the clearest and most achievable pathway on how to get there.  I highly recommend this episode to all fire safety engineers, not to just learn about the grant Ruben has just obtained, but to view the current state of FSE through the lens of this proposal. As it does, in an excellent way, highlight the shortcomings and failures of modern fire engineering.

Join us in this talk, and if you would like to read more about the grant, here is its official abstract (and near future will bring material for sure!).

Proposal Summary
Adaptive Fire Testing: A new foundation stone for fire safety (AFireTest)

The current fire safety paradigm is based on a set of standardized tests which have been developed as part of a prescriptive design framework, and do not provide in-depth understanding of construction products’ fire performance. The resulting incomplete fire performance characterization hampers the much needed innovation in the built environment. The current fire safety paradigm also places tremendous emphasis on the expertise of controlling bodies (AHJ), making them responsible both for the specification of detailed prescriptive rules, and for the acceptance of performance based designs. This is unsustainable in the face of innovation.

AFireTest strives to induce a paradigm shift in fire safety science and engineering (FSSE). The core of AFireTest is the development of Adaptive Fire Testing whereby optimum fire tests are determined from the infinite number of possible test specifications through the maximum expected net information gain (Value of Information, VoI). This will be developed using modern glazing and load bearing glass as innovative case study, resulting in breakthroughs in fire performance understanding. Secondly, a framework for advanced ‘grey’ surrogate modelling will be developed, combining the pattern identification strengths of machine learning with fundamental FSSE constraints. This will introduce a powerful new tool to FSSE and enable the VoI optimization. A grey modelling approach will also be developed for quasiinstantaneous building specific risk evaluations, allowing a new approach to the AHJ acceptance of fire designs. The future operationalization of the new framework for fire design acceptance will require large follow-up investments. Thus, stakeholder buy-in is crucial. Therefore, AFireTest will develop a methodology for the cost-benefit evaluation of fire safety frameworks. For the first time, fire safety approaches will be evaluated from the perspective of Law and Economics, laying the groundwork for an entirely new field of study.

----
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 the flaming combustion stops and the raging inferno disappears, the environment is still far away from a stable, stationary state. The heat emitted by the fire and accumulated by the structural elements is still on the move, travelling through the members until it gets eventually dissipated. As parts of the structure get heated, some processes will occur, that may influence their load-bearing capacity and other properties. This is nothing new, we recognize this as an obvious process within the so-called "decay" phase of the fire.

What is new, though, are some recent observations related to the behaviour of timber elements in this phase of the fire. Today's guests Thomas Gernay and Jochen Zehfuss (along with a team that I call EU Fire All-Star Team) have performed a very precise study in which they have shown on one example the exact conditions in which the load-bearing capacity is lost in the decay phase by a column. If you missed that, they made quite an impression on LinkedIn (check the post and discussion here). In their experiments carried out within a well-controlled furnace environment, the variable they played with was the duration of the heating phase. It allowed them to find out two separate behaviours - one in which the column collapses in the decay phase, and one (not very different) in which the collapse does not happen.  To learn more, please join us in the episode, and for sure - read the research paper provided in here.

If you would like a quick insight, I will also steal some text from Thomas's post on LinkedIn, as he did a great job summarizing their research. So here is his short comment:

"Two of the columns were subjected to ISO 834 heating until failure. They failed after 55 and 58 min (-> standard fire resistance).

Two other columns were subjected to 15 min of ISO 834 heating followed by controlled cooling. Flames self-extinguished after 40 min. But the columns still failed during the cooling phase, respectively after 98 and 153 min.

The load on the timber columns was constant throughout the tests. What changes between 15 min (end of heating) and 153 min (failure)? Heat transfer. The temperature of the inner parts of the column section continues increasing. Hence the strength continues decreasing.

Flaming and charring are not necessary for this inner temperature increase. And the absence of flaming is not a good predictor that the column is safe (see video).

By better understanding these phenomena, we can design to account for them - and achieve safe and resilient timber designs, including for burnout resistance when needed. Numerical modelling can support this objective. But simple methods based on charring rate fall short because they don't account for the slow heat transfer processes during the cooling phase."

----
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 Questions & Answers session 01 covering the topics brought up in November 2022.

In this session you can find answers to the following questions:

1. Fire resistance of joints asked by Millie Wan (answered by Piotr Turkowski) - jump to 1:41 
2. Fire detection in car parks asked by Elena Funk - jump to 11:10
3. Balancing safety and architectural beauty asked by Ekonudim Friday - jump to 15:51
4. Comment on driving fire safety in Iran by Neda Farhoudi - jump to 21:34
5. Smoke control strategies for boutique shops in malls asked by Szymek Matkowski - jump to 27:00

Please join my 2022 Listener Experience Survey - the link will work till Christmas 2022 :)

Episodes mentioned in this one:
073 - Smoke control in shopping malls - uncommon aspects that make or break the system
070 - Fire resistance is whatever you want it to be with Piotr Turkowski
015 - Global view on the fire safety from a starchitect perpective with Benjamin Ralph

----
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 Dalmarnock was the reality check for fire modelling, we could call the work carried by BRE at Cardington the birthplace of Structural Fire Engineering.  Welcome to episode 2 of Experiments that Changed Fire Science!

In this episode dr Tom Lennon from BRE takes us to a journey through the massive experimental programmes carried at BRE Cardington facility. A former aircraft hangar turned into a testing ground for ENTIRE BUILDINGS. That is what was the most unique for the programme - instead of focusing on single elements of the building (which we had been doing for ~150 years at that point) we did observe, touch and measure the behaviour of the entire structure. We did learn a lot from that... From understanding membrane actions, and the alternative load paths in structures, through validation of the natural fire Eurocode model to building a massive database still used to this day to verify and validate modern tools of structural fire engineering. Without Cardington, fire science would not be here. So please join me in this and listen to Tom's recollection of the glorious days of the fire science, at Cardington.

If you want to read more, I would start with the Book on the Behaviour of Multi Storey Steel Framed Buildings in Fire.
and also check these resources:

• BRE website about the tests
• Steelconstruction.info repository of test reports and data
• 2001 Cardington reports
• Steel frames under fire conditions  (PiT project final report)
• other UoE Cardington reports (PiT project)

----
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.

Delivery of fire safety to one billion inhabitants of informal settlements cannot be done through a single solution. No magical extinguishing ball nor hyper-sensitive sensor can solve this issue. As it is not a single issue - it is dozens of overlapping problems spanning from the availability of materials, how structures are built and how the urban landscape can be planned and managed. It is related to how society is managed, what role models are presented to them and what resources they have to fight fires... in fact, it is much much more. This is what we have discussed with prof. Richard Walls of Stallenbosch University in South Africa. Richard's group is leading in efforts to understand the science behind the informal settlement fires (and participated in the notable IRIS project by the University of Edinburgh, which is something you should also check here).

As discussed in the episode, Richard's group has prepared Fire Safety Engineering Guidelines, which can be accessed here for free! Please check it out and share it with those who may benefit from it.

If you have missed the episode with Danielle Antonellis, please check it in here.

Check out the free training series and documentaries on battling fires in informal settlements at Stallenbosch University Fire Group (FireSun) youtube (preview for the guests of Fire Science Show, soon to be released to the public!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi21ZyVLOWI

Picture credit: https://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/news/DispForm.aspx?ID=7730

----
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 a mini-series of episodes on experiments that changed fire science. In the first episode, we cover the a prioiri and posteriori modelling task within the Dalmarnock Fire Experiments programme carried out by the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. The whole experimental programme was led by prof. Jose Torrero. In this episode, we focus on two modelling tasks within the programme, that lead to a major shift in how modern modelling tools are used in fire engineering.

To learn more about the testing programme please visit the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering and the proceedings of the FIRESEAT Symposium 2007 which covered the study in depth. Guillermo's blog article about blind vs open fire modelling can be found here.

 The major papers discussed within this episode are:

• Round-robin study of a priori modelling predictions of the Dalmarnock Fire Test One
• Modelling of the Growth Phase of Dalmarnock Fire Test One
• Posteriori Modelling of Fire Test One

----
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.

Dear Terrestial Fire Engineers, let me take you on a journey that will make you experience fire engineering like nothing on our planet. Because in fact, it is the fire engineering of spacecraft for their operations in a zero-gravity environment. The environment in which the most fundamental aspects of fire engineering (think about smoke cannot go up when there is no up!) are being challenged. Where fire physics is completely different, and where things that are necessary for humans (oxygen, clothes...) become a major risk factor.

From my today's guest, Dr David L. Urban of NASA Glenn Research Centre, we will learn about the catastrophical fires that shaped the space industry. We get introduced to testing methods and fire safety engineering solutions commonly used on older and modern spaceships, and also try to take on the issue of fire safety of beyond-Earth human habitats.

I'm not sure how much practical engineering you will learn, but I am more than sure that you will enjoy this thoroughly. And maybe one day, you can pursue a career in space fire engineering...Who knows!

Additional resources:

• Saffire project
• 25 Years Ago: Fire Aboard Space Station Mir
• BBC 13 minutes to the moon - episode 4 (Apollo 1 fire)

Cover picture credit: NASA Glenn Research Centre
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/studying-flame-behavior-in-microgravity-with-a-solid-high-five

----
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.

Intumescent coatings are not magic. They are a product of amazing engineering, a theatre of thermophysical properties that create an insulative layer that sometimes is the only thing holding fire from destroying a structure. A chemical masterpiece in which the onset of swelling is chosen so that the paint layer is soft just when the chemical compound used to foam starts releasing gasses. Sharing many features with natural carbon-made materials, they char and oxidize. And once you start modelling them, you soon realize how crazy the solid heat transfer can become when you change not only the thermal conductivity but also the size of your body. Boy, what a complexity in a sub-millimetre layer of paint!

To learn all about them, I have invited dr Andrea Lucherini of FRISSBE  and Ghent University, who mastered them in his MSc and PhD. Andrea covers in detail all the mag... I mean engineering that goes into an intumescent coating and shares his own journey in this world.

In this episode, we have referenced episode 70 with Piotr Turkowski - fire resistance. If you have not heard it, it's a good moment to catch up.

Andrea has provided me links to his research, which I highly recommend:
- PhD thesis: https://doi.org/10.14264/uql.2020.1021
- modelling: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijthermalsci.2022.107922
- influence of heating conditions and thickness: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2020.103078
- influence of substrate: https://doi.org/10.1002/fam.2840
- application on timber: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2019.102887
- critical literature review: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcsr.2019.105712
- onset of swelling: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2019.03.014
- MSc thesis paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2017.10.004

----
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.

Long before I started the podcast, my bread and butter was to find clever ways to remove smoke from shopping malls. Actually, I like to believe I was pretty good at the job, given the fact some of the biggest projects in Eastern Europe successfully made their way through our office. At some point (after reading Roger Harrisons PhD thesis) I figured out there is some science in the stuff we are doing in our engineering, and that day I turned into a scientist. This idea turned into passion, and passion into quite an intense research that ended up with a PhD.

What matters in this journey is not the profits or titles I've received, but my own transformation. From someone seeking to optimize a system through improving assumptions for my analytical models and some more advanced calculation methods, to someone who appreciates the complexity of airflow in a labyrinthine mall. And some conclusions of this journey I would like to share with you. What I think are the uncommon things that make or break a smoke control system in a mall? Listen to the episode and you will find out (TL:DR - design fire, architecture, inlets, architecture and outlets :))

Here are some resources you may find useful:
- Gus Gaggliardi's list of resources mentioned in the podcast intro;
- My ResearchGate with a ton of resources on smoke control;
- The only English paper from my PhD with the summary of findings;
- I've lied, there is a second paper from my PhD summarizing why it does not matter where you place the fire in a compartment when running CFD!
- Review paper on axisymmetric plume models
- Actually, a funny story - in the end, I've written a book on smoke control in malls and it is available here (in Polish, sorry!). It is a summary of my PhD and not a guidebook as I've envisioned in 2016, but still - I guess it counts as a book :)

----
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.

Many creators will not agree, but in some cases, copying is the highest form of admiration. And there are things in Fire Safety Engineering that are more than worthy of being copied. One of them is the famous International Masters in Fire Safety Engineering course, carried together by the Universities of Ghent, Edinburgh, Lund and a new member - Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. And from what I've just learned from one of the masterminds - Prof. Bart Merci and Prof. Eulalia Planas- they do not mind that.

Of course, starting a second IMFSE is probably not feasible, but let us focus on WHY this particular programme is so successful. What makes this group of people so sought on the job market, and so competent when pursuing careers in academia? How is this programme so consistent, year after year, delivering world-class fire engineers? We try to isolate the little things that differentiate this programme from others in the world, so copying their success is a little easier. This episode is for anyone who is seeking an answer to the question, of what makes a great fire engineer.

If you are in a (lucky!) position to choose your MSc course, make sure to consider applying to IMFSE at www.imfse.be If I was making that decision today, I would not hesitate for a second!

----
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 thinking about 'risk' do you view it as a tool? I usually thought about it as a concept or maybe as a measure of 'how safe my building is?', but I have not really appreciated how beneficial it might be when used in such a way. Once you take it in its basic form - presentation of probabilities and consequences of fires in your buildings, you may use it to find answers to questions, that are a struggle to answer in another way. You can understand the performance of your building, its shortcomings and strengths.

I did not find this out on my own. It just had an amazing guest - prof. Ruben van Coile, outlined the risk concept for me, so I could discover it once again. And here, we both welcome you to join us in this discovery.

As you are done with this episode, I definitely recommend episode 45 where Ruben van Coile and Danny Hopkin discuss how risk can be used to determine the foundations of fire safety. If you liked this one, episode 45 is for you.

I will also shamelessly copy the list of resources provided the last time, as they are as relevant to this episode: 

1. D. Hopkin, R. Van Coile, and L. David, ‘Certain Uncertainty-Demonstrating safety in fire engineering design and the need for safety targets.’, SFPE Europe, 2017
2. R. Van Coile, D. Hopkin, D. Lange, G. Jomaas, and L. Bisby, ‘The Need for Hierarchies of Acceptance Criteria for Probabilistic Risk Assessments in Fire Engineering’, Fire Technol, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 1111–1146, Jul. 2019
3. R. Van Coile, D. Hopkin, and D. Lange, Guest Editorial: Probabilistic Methods in Fire Safety Engineering. Springer US, 2019
4. R. Van Coile, N. Elhami Khorasani, D. Lange, and D. Hopkin, ‘Uncertainty in Structural Fire Design’, in International Handbook of Structural Fire Engineering, K. LaMalva and D. Hopkin, Eds. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021, pp. 323–411
5. D. Hopkin, I. Fu, and R. Van Coile, ‘Adequate fire safety for structural steel elements based upon life-time cost optimization’, Fire Safety Journal, p. 103095, May 2020
6.  R. Van Coile, G. Jomaas, and L. Bisby, ‘Defining ALARP for fire safety engineering design via the Life Quality Index’, Fire Safety Journal, vol. 107, pp. 1–14, Jul. 2019
7.  D. Hopkin, M. Spearpoint, and R. Van Coile, ‘The J-Value and Its Role in Evaluating Investments in Fire Safety Schemes’, Fire Technol, vol. 54, no. 6, pp. 1547–1564, Nov. 2018

Also, keep your eyes open for the next edition of SFPE Handbook where my guests are publishing a new chapter on "Economics and Decision Making in Fire Risk Analysis"

----
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.

Today we talk fire resistance, but unlike you have ever heard. Join me and Dr Piotr Turkowski - two fire laboratory professionals in an honest discussion about their craft. The challenges in standardization and committee work, discoveries in laboratories that are very tough to implement in the test method design, and sometimes unscientific approaches which are necessary for a market consensus. All the challenges that make us view fire resistance in a different way than you may have. 

Here are some resources for further learning:

• EGOLF webpage, and a direct link to EGOLF Round Robin studies
• A video of our lab, if you are curious on how the biggest furnaces we talked about look like
• The paper about the steel beam that Piotr has mentioned
• The paper about the shear response of deep precast/prestressed concrete hollow core slabs subjected to fire 
• The paper about the intumescent reaction mechanisms
• The paper about modifying the insulation criterion

----
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.

Why so many researchers are spending their time tackling fire issues at the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI)? What is so challenging about this? We always lived near nature, why today this emerges as one of the 'hottest' topics of fire science? As my today's guest Prof. Michael Gollner says - you need a very bad combination of weather and vegetation conditions to create a really bad fire. However, these conditions are occurring more and more often - in California they are not even considering fire seasons anymore, but wildfires become a threat all year round. I don't want to jump to unsupported conclusions, but damn, the prominence of wildfires seems to be the consequence of climate change that we will see soonest, and will hurt us a lot.

In this episode, we take fire engineers into the world of WUI. We try to narrow down WHY fires coming from the outside are so dangerous and so different from threats we know. We discuss the paradigms of fire safety engineering and WUI preparedness, including defendable zones, threats from firebrands and the effects of wildfire smoke on the occupants. 

Finally, Michael shares with me his own experience with evacuating from a wildfire - a disturbing and interesting perspective of a fire scientist experiencing this first-hand. 

Please take a look at these wildfire and WUI resources:

• Michaels Fire Lab group webpage (with an endless amount of useful stuff in it)
• IBHS Wildfire Preparedness Guidance 
• NFPA Wildfire Division

----
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 factors influence the walking speed of an occupant? Is it just their physiology and crowd density? It seems it is more complicated than that (as most things are in fire science...). Dr John Gales of York University takes me on a journey through their extremally interesting research on anthropomorphic data and movement speeds, which they have been extensively carrying through the last years. You will learn why the crowd at a football match will have a different characteristic than one attending American football (handegg?). Why evacuation is quicker in torrential rain than in fire, and how stimuli may drive the walking speeds as well. And how a beer tent helped uncover that!

John has mentioned a lot of resources that may be of interest.

The online course mentioned by John is available at: https://uwaterloo.ca/fire-research-and-safety/fire-safety-program and a course outline may be found here.
Learn more about the York Fire Engineering group at https://yorkufire.com/
The  SFPE Foundation report cited in the episode can be found here.

A list of relevant papers is available below:

1.  Chin, K., Young, T., Chorlton, B., Aucoin, D., and Gales, J., (2022) Crowd Behaviour in Canadian Football Stadia - Part 1 - Data Collection. Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering (Canadian Science Publishing). 49 (7)
2. Chin, K., Young, T., Chorlton, B., Aucoin, D., and Gales, J., (2022) Crowd Behaviour in Canadian Football Stadia - Part 2 - Modelling Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering (Canadian Science Publishing). 49 (7)
3.  Yerushalami, A., Folk, L., Carton, H., Gales, J., Khan A., Weckman, B. (2022) Fire Evacuation Modelling of a Canadian Wildland Urban Interface Community. Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering (Canadian Science Publishing). 49 (1) 
4.  Arce, S., Jeanneret, C., Gales, J, Antonellis, D., and Vaiciulyte, S. (2021) Human Behaviour in Informal Settlement Fires in Costa Rica. Safety Science (Elsevier). 142. 105384. 
5. Young, T., Gales, J, Kinsey M, and Wong W. (2021) Variability in Stadia Evacuation under Normal, High-Motivation, and Emergency Egress. Journal of Building Engineering (Elsevier). 40 
6.  Folk, L., Gonzales, K., Gales, J., Kinsey, M, and Carratin, E. and Young, T. (2020) Emergency Egress for the Elderly in Care Home Fire Situations. Fire and Materials (John Wiley). 44(4): 595- 606. 

----
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've felt a bit awkward about how FSE handles smoke control in corridors. If you look closely into common practices, they rarely do include impressive engineering - more often you see some 'tips and tricks' that make the CFD simulations work out and systems are accepted. Doors opening/closing in specific timeline points, heat source sizes or soot generation parameters... I agree it does not necessarily mean that all the systems are designed wrongfully, or they do not provide safety... but in fact - how can we tell what they provide if we are not evaluating them in a clear and robust way?

In this episode, I talk to my colleague from the ITB - Dr Grzegorz Krajewski, about a next-generation smoke control experimental facility that has just been built at the ITB. From this talk, you will learn what doubts we have about the modern approach to designing smoke control in corridors, how we want to study it with our new facility and how you can take part in defining a new 'point zero' for the future of the smoke control.

If you like what you hear, and you would like us to conduct a specific experiment in the new facility, please reach us! We will do everything we can to run it.

----
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.

I wonder if we will be ever able to say: we know exactly how to build fire-safe buildings with mass timber.  However that day may never come, each day of research brings us a little bit closer to achieving this goal. And some days - like the one in which Andy Buchanan and Birgit Östman published their open access handbook on fire-safe use timber, we definitely leap towards success!

In today's episode, I'm interviewing prof.  Andy Buchanan on his thoughts on fire-safe use of timber, in relation to the handbook published recently (Book website). We discuss why some buildings bring more challenges than others, and how different the mass timber compartment fire can be from a contemporary noncombustible structure. What do we know about the behaviour of timber, how engineers can predict that behaviour and how that knowledge is put into practice? This episode is not about the book, it is about a mindset of how to safely approach the challenges lying ahead.

Oh, and about that book I've mentioned... The best part - the Authors and sponsors have paid for it and it is accessible online. No tricks. You can download the pdf right here. Enjoy!

----
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.

Will a higher resolution mesh make my CFD more accurate? That is a harmless question, and most of us would tend toward 'I guess yeah'. But let us try and unpack this. Into atoms! What does higher resolution mean? How exactly solver deals with increased spatial discretization and what are the exact consequences of that? What is a high resolution for a tiny orifice and what is a high resolution for a road tunnel? But it gets better... What makes CFD more accurate? Is it better alignment with experimental data - if so, do you know the experimental and numerical uncertainties that allow you to actually compare them? If not, how can you tell if the second try in the mesh sensitivity study is a disturbing result or something well within the numerical uncertainty?

Oh boy, such a simple question and so many things to answer.

And you have guessed it - that is what we are trying to do in this podcast episode with dr Jason Floyd of the UL Fire Safety Research Institute. And on top of that, you will learn a ton about mesh sensitivity and model uncertainties.  You will also know why some models are more difficult than others - especially when you start to play with fluid-solid interaction and pyrolysis.

This episode was inspired by Bryan Klein - props to Bryan! He was a guest on the podcast and we have covered a very similar topic in it - you may want to listen to it as well! The trigger to make this episode came from the issue tracker, and you may want to check that thread as well 

If you have some great podcast episode ideas, let me know! I'll get this done, I'm doing this whole thing for you.

----
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.

This amount of heat flux for this amount of time, routine conditions, check, done. This is how I used to do my engineering and tenability assessment related to heat stress... up till today when prof Denisse Smith and prof Gavin Horn took me on a bumpy journey into the physiology of humans in fire conditions and in personal protective equipment (PPE). It is astonishing, that the stress on the body of the firefighter may be as great from the fire as from their own heat generation due to work being done. If you think about it - it is obvious. PPE protects the heat transfer...both ways! You won't heat up, but you cannot really cool down either. 

This is something that every firefighter knows (feels), but why we - fire engineers should think about that? When we design a building, we design it for firefighter accessibility. We provide them with tools to reach the place of fire and begin efficient extinguishing actions. But what if just getting to the place where the fire is, is so physically exhausting, that efficient actions are unlikely to be carried out? Do we ever think that when we design a risky environment on the 30th floor or 5 floors below the ground? Or when our landscrapers have such vast walking distances, that mistaking an entrance may be an error that costs you dozens of minutes? Boy was I uneducated in this regard, and I am really thankful to Denisse and Gavin for teaching me some really important lessons they have learnt through decades of experiments in this field.

If you would like to learn more, you should check out the websites of their respective institutions, as they are filled with great resources on this subject:

• University of Illinois Fire Service Institute
• UL Fire Safety Research Institute
• UL Fire Safety Research Institute Academy

----
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.

Do we need another fire handbook? If so, what handbook would that be? I guess a question like this must have gone through Brian Meachams' mind when he got the idea for a handbook of fire and environment. And he got a brilliant co-editor - Margaret McNamee to support him in this tough work. The effect - a complete piece on the environmental effects of fires - but beyond just smoke and contamination. A piece that deals with the complexities of the modern world, sustainability and resilience. One that considers product lifecycle assessment as much as the toxicity of its combustion products. A holistic view gives us fire engineers a different lens to view our work through.

In this episode, I interview Brian and Margaret on why this handbook came to life.  That why is probably the most important question to be asked. If there was no reason, why go through all this effort to structurize and condense the knowledge we have so far amassed? If why does not exist, why would anyone go through the hassle of considering one more (difficult) thing in their project?

Well, I hope I won't spoil the episode, but the why exists. And it is a pretty good one. And to learn it, you have to dig into this episode!

You can find the handbook here:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-94356-1#about-this-book

It is behind a paywall, but many universities and institutes should have free access!

The publisher describes this handbook as:
The fundamental purpose of this handbook is to raise awareness about the environmental impacts of fire and fire suppression, primarily within the fire engineering and firefighting communities, but also within the environmental engineering and planning disciplines. The Handbook provides readers with a fundamental understanding of the problem and its magnitude and includes a set of tools and methods for assessing environmental, social and financial impacts, and a set of tools for identifying and selecting appropriate mitigation options.

• Presents previously unavailable material on identification, assessment and mitigation of environmental fires
• Facilitates readers with knowledge in one area to focus on topics where they lack expertise
• Extensively cites detailed studies and reports to support in-depth study in each of the topic areas

----
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 does not matter if you hate or love BIM, does not matter if you use it daily or have no idea what it is... Building Information Modelling will be an important part of our engineering future and we better get used to it.  In this episode, I talk to Peter Thompson of GHD, who had previously worked at Autodesk as a Revit developer, and prof. Ruggiero Lovreglio, a teacher of computer methods in design at Massey University. Having two experts - one a developer, and the other a user of BIM I try to get balanced answers on what BIM means for Fire Safety Engineering and how will it impact our future. And I must say I am surprised by the answers - I was pretty sure we will spend an hour talking about issues with transferring the models, but after this talk, this whole BIM environment seems like a pretty good idea!

I hope you will also enjoy this journey through the near and a bit future of BIM technology. Looking forward to hear back from you about your BIM journeys, thoughts and ideas on how make this the technology of the future FSE.

----
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.

The relation between ventilation conditions and fire severity is quite a fundamental one. You don't even have to be a fire safety engineer to realize that more air means a bigger fire. But how does air get into the compartment fire in the first place?

Through broken windows of course!

And here we come to the subject of today's episode. Because with all the considerable improvements in glazing technologies for building facades, is it really okay to assume that the glazing has failed and all we are left is a giant hole that allows the air flow inside? How does the glass fail, and when and what exactly are the consequences of this failure? These are the questions asked to professor Wang Yu of the State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (SKLFS) at USTC, China. Yu takes me through his research from his PhD at Edinburgh, and through more recent experiments carried out by his group in China. We discuss FEM modelling of glass and some specific behaviour of modern glazing technologies exposed to different kinds of fires.

If you would like to learn more about this fundamental topic, here are some great further reading resources (Yu has so far 29 papers on this subject and these are just the tip of the iceberg!):

• Experimental study on fallout behaviour of tempered glass façades with different frame insulation conditions in an enclosure fire
• Investigation of the thermal response and breakage mechanism of point-supported glass facade under wind load
• Determination of critical fallout condition of tempered glass in an enclosure fire
• The effect of glass panel dimension on the fire response of glass façades
• Crack evolution process of window glass under radiant heating
• Determination of critical breakage conditions for double glazing in fire

----
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.

[March 2023 update] The Thesis PDF is finally available! Check it here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369141515_Fire_risk_associated_with_photovoltaic_installations_on_flat_roof_constructions_-_Experimental_analysis_of_fire_spread_in_semi-enclosures

If a PV panel is fire safe, and the roof is fire safe, what is the outcome of a panel placed on the roof? Not a great surprise that merging two things that meet their requirements within their respectable eco-systems gives a not such a fire-safe outcome after all... This is the difference between considering systems versus product characteristics, and in relation to the fire safety of PV panels, something truly unique to my today's guest - dr Jens Steemann Kristensen.

Jens has gone a long way from burning PV panels in a cone calorimeter to trying to understand the holistic behaviour of panels placed on the roof. Join me in learning about his journey, his doubts and findings, and most importantly - some really interesting findings in how the issue of fire-safe PV roofs can be solved.

----
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.

How much the fire scene at households has changed over the last 30 years? Why modern furniture burns worse than one made with wood, cotton and other natural materials? And what does that mean to firefighting? What challenges do modern firefighters face fighting residential fires... There is so many questions to be asked about residential fires, and in this episode, I answer a lot of them with the firefighting research legends - Dan Madrzykowski of the UL Fire Safety Research Institute and professor Charlie Fleischmann from the University of Canterbury.

After listening to this episode you must check the website of the UL FSRI! That is a vault fille with fire science gold, not to be missed by anyone passionate about fire safety.

And if you are here to find some info about the Fire Hose Prop we have discussed, seek no more - just follow this link to learn all about it.

----
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.