PhD Studentship possibility at University of Strathclyde

Applications are sought for a PhD studentship in improved analysis methods for brominated fire retardants in the natural environment.

Brominated fire retardants (BFRs) are a broad class of chemicals that are used in plastics, protective coatings, fabrics, furniture foam and other materials to delay ignition and slow fire growth to improve the fire safety of materials. Very little is known about BFRs at low exposure concentrations, but widespread detection around the world underscores the need to learn more about their toxicity effects, potential carcinogenicity and ease of mobility in the environment. The aims of this interdisciplinary PhD studentship are to develop analytical methods for improved detection of BFRs in the environment and utilise advanced chemometric methods for evaluating the data collected from these complex samples.

The detection of fire retarding compounds is challenged by many factors. A study evaluating prescribed analysis methods for highly purified standards showed that many BFRs have overlapping retention times in standard analytical methods, which means that they are not separated adequately when present in a mixture. This potential may increase as the complexity of samples increases. In at least two cases, environmental samples thought to contain PBDE-derived compounds were demonstrated to contain materials of natural origin only. Despite these demonstrated inadequacies, standard methods continue to be prescribed and BFR detections continue to be reported around the world. Advances in two-dimensional gas chromatography, isotope ratio mass spectrometry and position specific isotope analysis make development of new analytical methods possible.

The successful candidate will join an interdisciplinary research team spanning the Departments of Civil & Environmental Engineering (Faculty of Engineering) and Pure & Applied Chemistry (Faculty of Science). We are most interested a researcher with 1^st class or upper 2^nd class Honours degree in engineering, chemistry, physics, applied mathematicians or other discipline. A strong computational background is preferred.

There is one studentship associated with this advertisement and this student will be based at the University of Strathclyde. The studentship is open to individuals within the EU/EEA only and provides a stipend of approximately £13,800 per year. For further information or to apply for this studentship, please contact Dr. Christine Switzer at christine.switzer@strath.ac.uk.

Holly Smith receives JM Lessells Travel Scholarships from Royal Society of Edinburgh

The Royal Society of Edinburgh has awarded a JM Lessells Scholarship to the fire group PhD student Holly Smith.

Holly will spend two months at the Department of Civil Engineering, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. She will be examining methods of using digital image correlation in support of her PhD work on shear failure of concrete structures during fire, which is supervised by Dr Tim Stratford. This technique has only recently been applied in structural engineering by Dr Andy Take of Queen’s University and as a consequence there are a number of challenges in its use. Her visit to Queen’s University will allow her to gain expertise from Dr Andy Take and Dr Neil Hoult, who have been extending Take’s digital image analysis methods to structural measurements and work on a post-processing technique to interpret the initial results that she has obtained from her first set of experiments. Queen’s University also has concrete structures in fire research activity, led by Dr Mark Green, and working with this group will also be very beneficial for Holly’s research.

PhD defense of Jamie Stern-Gottfried on Travelling Fires for Structural Design

Dear All,

I’m very happy to convey the news that Jamie Stern-Gottfried has successfully defended (with flying colours) his PhD viva, “Travelling Fires for Structural Design (pdf)” this morning in Manchester.

The viva was instructive and educational for all (candidate, supervisor (Guillermo Rein), internal examiner (Luke Bisby), and even external examiner (Colin Bailey)), and Jamie has only very minor corrections to make before he can insist (as I'm sure he will!) on being called Doctor.

In the words of Prof Bailey, all of the questions were “extremely well answered” and the thesis was beautifully defended.

Congratulations to Jamie (and to Guillermo) for this novel and important piece of work!! I can only hope that Jamie’s penchant for collaboration with structural engineers continues in the future...

Luke Bisby
Internal Examiner

(sent on Fri, 15 Jul 2011)

PhD in Robust Upscaling of Smouldering Processes at University of Strathclyde

A PhD studentship is available in Robust Upscaling of Smouldering Processes, with a specific focus on linking results from in situ smouldering remediation (Self-sustaining Treatment for Active Remediation or STAR) experiments in the laboratory (0.003 m^3) to field scale (3 m^3 to 300 m^3 and larger) activities. We are most interested in engineers, physicists, chemists and applied mathematicians with experience or at least a strong interest in combustion and fire sciences. This studentship is offered in partnership between the University of Strathclyde, the University of Edinburgh and the company SiREM.

Supervisor: Dr. Christine Switzer

Co-supervisors: Prof. Jose Torero, Dr. Guillermo Rein and Dr. Gavin Grant


The development of in situ smouldering combustion as a remediation technology (STAR) has emphasized small scale experimentation as a vehicle to understand the different processes involved and to optimize the relevant variables such as ignition protocol and flow rates. These tests have served as the basis under which larger scale tests have been conducted. Larger scale tests have been performed with overall success but with different levels of trial and error that has proven not only costly but having some negative effect in the overall performance. The optimized utilization of STAR in real sites needs to have a clear protocol that will help define the conditions that will best allow scaling-up of laboratory data.

Preliminary assessment of the viability of a site will always be done on the basis of small scale experiments. Definition of the details of the large scale implementation requires the inevitable scaling-up of the information obtained. This can be done via modelling but this requires a detailed understanding of the different phenomena involved. This understanding is currently not complete. An excellent source of information that can allow better understanding of the parameters differentiating small from large scale experiments is the thorough a posteriori assessment of the different large scale tests that have been conducted. While some assessment has been done, it has been mostly qualitative and it has never been directly correlated to small scale behaviour.

The proposal for this studentship is based on the need to develop the scale-up understanding from existing (and future) large scale experiments. The analysis of temperature/emissions/igniter/flow data together with the structure of excavation data will allow better understanding of the large scale tests. This information can be fed into existing (analytic and numerical) models to develop up-scaling tools. Furthermore, this information has to be linked to the wide database of small scale experimental data to try to establish an ideal protocol to use bench scale experimentation for the purpose of assessing site viability.

There is one studentship associated with this advertisement and this student will be based at the University of Strathclyde, UK. The studentship is open to individuals within the EEA only and provides a stipend of £13,590 per year. For further information, please contact Dr. Christine Switzer [mailto:christine.switzer@strath.ac.uk]

PhD funding on subsurface fires. Earth and Natural Sciences

A PhD studentship to study peat fires between University College Dublin and University of Edinburgh is available to a student of any nationality. We are most interested in engineers, physicists and chemists with a background on thermal sciences, some experience in laboratory work and an interest on Earth sciences. See below a brief description. For information and application, see PhD Programme in Earth and Natural Sciences at UCS.

Project BIO 3: Characterising the dynamics and environmental impact of subsurface
peat fires by controlled experiments

Principal Investigator: Dr Jon Yearsley (UCD) – jon.yearsley@ucd.ie
Collaborators: Claire Belcher (University of Edinburg); Guillermo Rein (University of Edinburg)

Fire is an increasing global threat to the carbon store and ecosystem services provided by peatlands (they contain 1/3 of terrestrial carbon). Peatland wildfires are extreme events that are becoming more frequent both in Ireland and internationally. Smouldering peat produces 5‐40% of annual global carbon emissions, but these are presently not accounted for by the IPCC7. They threaten the environment (e.g. habitat destruction and greenhouse gas emissions) and human health (e.g. air quality), but our understanding of these smouldering fires is poor compared to flaming fires. The core of the project will study sub‐surface peatland fire behaviour by performing experimental peat burns for a range environmental conditions. The student will develop the experimental protocol at the Centre for Fire Safety Engineering (University of Edinburgh) and then installed at UCD for the majority of the experimental manipulations. This project combines fire dynamics and Earth systems research and builds upon an existing collaboration between UCD and University of Edinburgh. The work has relevance to climate change mitigation/adaptation, managing peatland carbon stores against the risk of sub‐surface fires and the fundamental science of smouldering fire. We are looking for an outstanding student with interest in undertaking experimental research on the interface between fire dynamics, Earth systems and ecological modelling.
There is one PhD Studentship associated with this Project and will be based at UCD

Lloyd’s Science of Risk Prize goes to Fire Technology

Congratulations to Dr Francesco Colella for winning the Lloyd’s Science of Risk Prize in the Technology Category.

The prize was for his research paper "A Novel Multiscale Methodology for Simulating Tunnel Ventilation Flows During Fires" (published in Fire Technology). He led this work as a Research Associate at The School of Engineering from 2007 to 2010.

Dr Richard Ward, CEO of Lloyds told Francesco "The judging panel, comprising experts from academia and insurance felt your paper illustrated how novel computational methods can be used to reduce fire risk in the future. The panel were particularly impressed with how you reduced model run-time by concentrating on what is critical and by coupling fast and slower models".

This is Lloyd’s research prize for academics and aims at keeping the world’s leading specialist insurance market with the pace of academic knowledge and cutting edge thinking.


On top of this winning paper, The University of Edinburgh had three more papers short-listed as the top of each category (two of them from the fire group as well):

* Mr Craig Poland, short-listed in Technology Risk (best runner up), from the School of Medicine for his paper "Carbon nanotubes introduced into the abdominal cavity of mice show asbestos-like pathogenicity"  (published in Nature Nanotechnology).

* Dr Wolfran Jahn, short-listed in Technology Risk, from the School of Engineering for his paper "Forecasting Fire Growth using an Inverse Zone Modelling Approach" (published in Fire Safety Journal).

* Dr Claire Belcher, short-listed in Climate Change Risk, from the School of Geosciences for her paper "Increased fire activity at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary in Greenland due to climate-driven floral change" (published in Nature Geoscience).

See related article Hot talent in risk research in the Staff Bulletin of the University of Edinburgh.
See press release by Springer.

A Note on the Philosophy of Engineering Research

Foreword to the PhD Thesis of Dr Cecilia Abecassis Empis.


A Note on the Philosophy of Engineering Research

With the arrival of the computer era came a desperate frenzy of research in all fields with an ever increasing urge to quantify, discretise and explicitly pick apart nature enabling its eloquent description using the languages of mathematics and physics.

This very urge appears to be our largest limitation in attaining a precise representation of nature. Nature is, by nature, a continuum with an infinity that can not be quantified as much in the infinite immensity of the universe’s expanse as in the infinite minuteness into which things can be dissected and in the natural continuum of anything in between, exemplified by the naturally recurring but non-recurrent irrational numbers of Pi, Euler and Fibonacci.

Nevertheless intrinsic to human nature is a desire to group things, categorise, to box knowledge into entities we can comprehend and computers have allowed us to do this more quickly. Part of this process requires an evaluation of what is to be done and what it is to be used for. Be it an equation that represents the physics of electricity, the theories that describe types of intelligence or music that depicts the dance of the bees, the limits of its “accuracy” always lie within the bounds of the assumed scale, an agreement of the axioms of compliance.

Engineering is precisely the art and craft of deciphering such problems. The skill lies in evaluating the scope of the conundrum and identifying the critical players. In outlining the discrete pieces of this puzzle, engineers have to untangle the fundamentals from the peripheral fillers. They then stand back and reason the rules of the game using them to discard unnecessary detail and weave back together the key pieces creating an optimal solution. Engineering is a mere translation tool that allows for the interpretation of nature in a way we can fathom.

It is important however to distinguish a “solution” from “natural reality”. With the computing world fast-appealing to more and more of our senses, it is often tempting to indulge in smaller and smaller dissections of our problems. As we become increasingly obsessed with intricate dependencies we run the risk of creating a solution that is self-fulfilling without realising it has departed so far from its application that it has become a mere representation of the human ego with little or no use beyond the amusement of a select few curious minds. Detail can lead to a false sense of proximity to nature whereas the very nature of engineering is to accept that any attempt to model nature will always fall short of perfect. Instead engineering embraces the asymptotic nature of complex solutions and opts for providing simple and effective shortcuts that are perfect if they solve the particular problem at hand within the scope of its axioms. Hence an engineer must be humble and not lose sight of the problem objectives, the initial assumptions and the scale delineating the limitations and applications of engineering work.

Engineering research aims to provide rational solutions that make daily life just a little bit easier in order to make time for sitting back, relaxing and to enjoy the awesomeness of the irrational, chaotic magnificence of nature.

In this light it is hoped this work will make a useful contribution.

by Cecilia Abecassis Empis

Dr Angus Law

Congratulations to Angus Law, who passed his PhD viva on the 6th of September, with the examiners requiring only minor corrections to his thesis. Well done Dr Law!

Congratulations to Dr Colella for his PhD thesis defense

Francesco Colella successfully defended his PhD thesis on the 21st of May 2010 at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. The thesis title is "Multiscale Analysis of Tunnel Ventilation Flows and Fires" and she was supervised by Prof. Romano Borchiellini and Dr Vittorio Verda at Politecnico di Torino, and by Guillermo Rein and Prof Jose Torero at the University of Edinburgh.

Lessells Travel Scholarship for Sam Grindrod

Congratulations to BRE Trust PhD student Sam Grindrod who has been awarded 2010 J M Lessells Travel Scholarship from the The Royal Society of Edinburgh.

The funding (£8,750) is for Sam to travel to Lund University, Sweden for seven months, where he will be collaborating on project M*E*T*R*O, mainly on the medium-scale tunnel fire experiments.

What am I doing here? A poem.

What am I doing here?
At first, I did not know.
Was it textile-reinforced mortars?
Or heating steel till it doth glow?

Well the later course, it was chosen,
But it needed something to make it differ
So that my interest and my desire,
Would be steadfast and would not wither.

“Fill the tubes with concrete”, I said
“And smother them with paint,
Load the damn thing axially,
and apply a prescribed heating rate”

I delved into the literature,
To see what others had discovered
The lack of understanding
Well my whole body shuddered.

The concrete that was tested
Was not of the highest calibre
Unlike today, where we reinforce it
With polypropylene and steel fibre

Now I wonder about modelling
Using computers for assistance
To see whether they can help us
Design more accurate fire resistance

I found that this is different
From anything done before
I hope I find my answers
In three years, well maybe four.

By David Rush, PhD student

Congratulations to Dr Abecassis Empis and Dr Jahn for their PhD thesis defenses

Congratulations to the two new Doctors of Philosophy from the fire group!

Cecilia Abecassis Empis successfully defended her PhD thesis on the 23rd of March 2010. The external examiner was Prof. Fred Mowrer from California Polytechnic State University, and the internal was Prof Dougal Drysdale. The thesis title is "Analysis of the Compartment Fire Parameters Influencing the Heat Flux Incident on the Structural Façade" and she was supervised by Prof Jose Torero.

Wolfram Jahn defended his PhD thesis on the 8th of April 2010. The external examiner was Prof Bart Merci from Ghent University, and the internal was Dr Stephen Welch. The thesis title is "Inverse Modelling to Forecast Enclosure Fire Dynamics", and he was supervised by Dr Guillermo Rein and Prof Jose Torero.

Congratulations to Dr Steinhaus, Dr Biteau and Dr Roben for their PhD thesis defenses

Congratulations to the three new Doctors of Philosophy from the fire group!

Thomas Steinhaus successfully defended his PhD thesis on the 9th of Nov 2009. The external examiner was Prof. Richard Hull from University of Central Lancashire, and the internal was Dr Guillermo Rein. The thesis title is "Determination of Intrinsic Material Flamability Properties from Material Tests assisted by Numerical Modelling" and he was supervised by Prof Jose Torero and Dr Stephen Welch.

Hubert Biteau defended his PhD thesis on the 21st of Dec 2009. The external examiner was Prof Jean-Pierre Vantelon from Ecole Nationale Superieure de Mecanique et D'Aerotechnique, and the internal was Dr Guillermo Rein. The thesis title is "Thermal and Chemical Behaviour of an Energetic Material and a Heat Release Rate Issue", and he was supervised by Prof Jose Torero and Prof Dougal Drysdale.

Charlotte Roben defended her PhD thesis on the 22nd of Jan 2010. The external examiner was Prof Ian Burgess from University of Sheffield, and the internal was Dr Tim Stratford. The thesis title is "The effect of cooling and non-uniform fires on structural behaviour", and she was supervised by Dr Martin Gillie and Prof Jose Torero.

Congratulations to Dr Pironi for his PhD thesis defense

Paolo Pironi successfully defended his PhD thesis on the 4th of Sept 2009.

The external examiner was Prof. Bernie Kueper from Queen's University, Canada, and the internal was Dr Guillermo Rein. The PhD supervisors of Paolo are Prof Jason Gerhard and Prof. Jose Torero.

The thesis title is "Smouldering Combustion of Organic Liquids in Porous Media for Remediating NAPL-contaminated Soils".

Some of the paper based on his work are:
* Self-Sustaining Treatment for Active Remediation: A Novel Technology for Non-Aqueous Phase Liquid
Contamination, Environmental Science and Technology 43, pp. 5871-5877, 2009.
* Small-Scale Forward Smouldering Experiments for Remediation of Coal Tar in Inert Media, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute 32 (2009) 1957-1964.