List of 2009 conferences in Fire and Combustion sciences

This list is has been moved to the permanent link:

http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/fire/conferences.html

It will be updated there for the incoming years. Anyone can send to Fire.Research@ed.ac.uk the details of fire-related and combustion-related conferences not listed.

*Events in 2010*

International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and Security ISTSS 2010, 17–19th March2010, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Sixth International Seminar on Fire and Explosion Hazards, Weetwood Hall, Leeds, UK, April 11th to 16th, 2010.

10th International Conference on Combustion and Energy Utilization to be held in Turkey on the 4th – 8th May 2010.

International Conference Tunnel Safety and Ventilation - New Developments in Tunnel Safety, Graz, Austria, 3-5 May 2010.

6th International Conference on Structures in Fire, SiF’10, June 2-4, 2010 at Michigan State University, in East Lansing, Michigan.

International fire prevention symposium, a two-day international symposium organized by vfdb as part of the INTERSCHUTZ (international trade fair for civil security) at the Congress Center Leipzig from 8 to 9 June 2010, Leipzig, Germany.

8th International Conference on Performance-Based Codes and Fire Safety Design Methods, 16-18 June 2010, Lund University, Sweden.

Interflam, 12th international Conference on Fire Science and Engineering, 5-7 July 2010, University of Nottingham, UK.

33rd International Symposium on Combustion, Tsinghua University, August 1-6, 2010, Beijing, China.

*Past Events*

Fire and Materials 2009 Conference, 26-28 January, San Francisco.

APICI (Spain) 5th International Congress on Fire Safety Engineering, 18-20 February, Madrid.

International Conference on Applications of Structural Fire Engineering, 19-20 February 2009, Prague

SUPDET 2009: Suppression and Detection Research and Applications, February 24-27, 2009 at the International Plaza Resort and Spa in Orlando, FL.

FIRES3, Forecasting and modelling wildfire risk for UK moorlands and heaths, 31 March-1 April 2009, Manchester.

4th European Combustion Meeting (ECM 2009), 14 - 17 April 2009, Vienna.

2nd INTERNATIONAL TUNNEL SAFETY FORUM FOR ROAD AND RAIL, 20 - 22 April 2009, Lyon, France, by Tunnel Management International.

European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2009. 19-24 April 2009 in Vienna. Session NH8.1/BG2.9 on "Spatial and temporal patterns of wildfires: models, theory, and reality".

FRT09: Fire Retardant Technologies 2009, 21 - 23 April 2009, Preston - UK. By the Speciality Chemicals and Applied Materials Chemistry Groups of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

2009 Graduate Lecture, Institution of Fire Engineers - 24th April, Arup Campus, Solihull, UK.

Combustion Colloquia dedicated to Prof. D'Alessio, organized by the Italian Section of The Combustion Institute in Naples on April 26-28, 2009.

2009 NIST Building and Fire Research Annual Fire Conference, April 28 - 30, 2009 at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD.

13th International Symposium on Aerodynamics and Ventilation of Vehicle Tunnels (ISAVVT 13), New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, 13 - 15th May 2009

Symposium: Dust Explosion Hazard Recognition and Control: New Strategies, Baltimore, Maryland, May 13-14, 2009.

20th Annual Recent Advances in Flame Retardancy of Polymeric Materials, June 1-3, 2009, Stamford, CT.

2009 Rasbash Lecture, Institution of Fire Engineers - June 4, Defence Fire & Rescue Service Headquarters, Andover, UK.

6th Mediterranean Combustion Symposium. June 7th to 11th 2009, in Ajaccio, Corsica. Note that a special session dedicated to forest fires is now included in the programme.

Scottish Fire Engineering Network Conference, "Fire Safety Engineering: Enabling Innovation", June 16th 2009, Hosted by Strathclyde Fire & Rescue, SFR HQ Bothwell Road, Hamilton, UK.

Wildfire 2009, 16th & 17th June 2009, Lyndhurst. This is the UK’s only national conference on wildfires.

"Combustion Theory and Modelling" Institute of Physics Spring meeting. London, The Royal College of Pathologists, 24th of June. The 2009 "Huw Edwards Prize for Services to Combustion Physics" will be awarded to Prof Graham Dixon-Lewis during a dinner on the 23rd of June.

86th Annual General Meeting and Conference of The Institution of Fire Engineers, “Fire and Life Safety Engineering – the Impact on Global Communities”, 1 and 2 July, in Glasgow.

4th International Symposia on Human Behaviour in Fire, 13-25 July, Cambridge.

22nd International Colloquium on the Dynamics of Explosions and Reactive Systems, July 27-31, Minsk, Belarus.

12th European Meeting on Fire Retardant Polymers FRPM, 31 August–3 September 2009, Poznan, Poland.

14th International Conference on Automatic Fire Detection AUBE’09, 8–10 September 2009, Duisburg, Germany

The 4th European Summer School on Hydrogen Safety will be held 7-16 September 2009 in Corsica.

One day meeting on "Soots" by the British Section of the Combustion Institute, 16 Sept 2009 at Shell Thornton Research Centre, Chester, UK. See programmer here.

2009 COCCFEA International Workshop on Combustion Simulation and Modelling, Imperial College, London on 17-18 September 2009

The IOP Combustion Physics Group is holding a one day meeting on Current Research in Combustion: A Forum for Research Students and Early Career Researchers on 22nd September 2009 at Loughborough University.

9th International Water Mist Conference 2009, September 23 - 24 2009, London.

Eurofire 2009, Fire Protection Engineering Conference, A mature way forward to save life and property? 24 & 25 September 2009 in Bruges.

Advanced Research Workshop on Fire Protection and Life Safety in Buildings and Transportation Systems, 15-17 October 2009 in Santander, Spain.

SFPE The Annual Meeting and Professional Development Conference and Exposition in Scottsdale, Arizona, October 17-22, 2009.

Fire and Rescue in the 21st Century. How Science and Engineering Support the Fire Service, 3rd FireSeat, Wednesday 4th November 2009, Edinburgh.

National Telford Institute Technical Workshop: A Unified Framework for Performance-Based Structural Engineering under Exceptional Conditions, 16-17 November 2009, University of Edinburgh.

International excellence in consultancy in fire safety

Edinburgh Global profiles the Fire Group work as "world class expertise that puts Edinburgh on the map as a leading centre for consultancy in fire safety".

Short Review of 20th BCC Flame Retardancy Conference, Stamford, June 2009

by Nicolas Bal and Guillermo Rein, University of Edinburgh.



The 20th Annual Recent Advances in Flame Retardancy of Polymeric Materials, was held in Stamford, Connecticut, on June 1-3, 2009. The venue was well chosen (as had been in previous years), specially for its good location near NYC, and nearby airports. The organization was flawless. In total, 35 papers were presented arranged in six sessions (General Papers, Halogen Flame Retardants, Nanocomposites, Industrial Applications, Environmental and Toxicity Issues, and Testing). The audience, about 70 people, came primary from the USA and Europe and a significant fraction were industry representative.

The conference had its two main strengths in the emphasis on the needs of industry, and the diversity of speakers, which allowed to see a broad range of points of view on flame retardants' future (fire, chemistry, new polymer formulas, regulations, toxicity...). However, the majority of the presentations focused on the detailed decomposition chemistry of retardant formulas in small samples (miligrams to grams) rather than on the burning behaviour at the real scale (~kilograms). Maybe, this is partially due to the historical focus of the retardant industry on passing the flammability tests rather than on real-world behaviour, which unfortunately seem to be significantly different.

The Fire Group at Edinburgh was represented by a invited paper (written by Guillermo & Nicolas) in the first session “General papers and reviews”. The talk, entitled “Solid ignition at high fluxes”, presented the numerical results of solid ignition to explain the unexpected trend in the time to ignition at high heat fluxes (up to 200 kW/m²) in PMMA samples. Results support that the mechanism causing this is in-depth radiation absorption.

Short report on the FRT09 Fire Retardant Technologies 2009

By Freddy Jervis, BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, The University of Edinburgh, UK

Fire Retardant Technologies 2009 (21 - 23 April) hosted more than 120 delegates and was held at University of Central Lancashire in Preston, North West of Manchester, UK. It was organized by Speciality Chemicals and Applied Materials Chemistry Groups of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The 3 day event showed 18 presentations and 22 posters and included optional visits to tour Leighs Paints Intumescent Coating Test Facility, Bodycote Warrington Testing Laboratories and UClan Fire Reasearch laboratories.

As can be inferred from the title, the focus of the conference was current research done and in progress regarding fire retardant technology. The overall organization of the talks was well planned, providing a solid introduction into fire retardant technology following with current and emergent technologies and then focusing on testing and environmental concerns of these materials. The conference focused heavily on the chemical side of fire engineering prioritizing on the interaction of molecules in the gaseous phase in order to prevent ignition and toxicity of these materials. Some descriptions were given on the current testing methods for fire retardant and various materials were presented showing how they perform in these tests.

Judging from the presentations I attended, the majority of the work being undertaken on flame retardants is on studying the effects on ignition of a small size material sample exposed to some sort of heating. There is a fair amount of research carried out on the toxicity of these materials and how these could adversely affect lives of people during a fire but the common consensus seems to be that as long as ignition is prevented, worrying about later effects should be less important. Some of the presentations did go into detail of how new materials are assessed describing this as a long and financially heavy process for new materials to be introduced as well as some aims in order to reduce toxicity, and the banning some of the halogen based materials currently used.

Overall, I did find the conference to be very informative on how fire retardants are currently established and implemented and some of the research undertaken. As I said before; however, due to a large focus being on the chemistry of the fire, little interest seems to be put on assessing the fire behaviour (e.g. looking at the flame spread rate). Although there was some results concerning the evolution of the heat release rate, all work was just at the small scale. There was some presentations that showed inadequacy of certain tests used to assess the fire behaviour of the material and its ignitability; however, little seems to be actually done in this area by the retardant industry.

I appreciate the financial support from BRE Trust and BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering to attend this conference.

Freddy Jervis