Ancient climate change is a burning issue

As published this month in Nature Geoscience, forest wildfires that took place in Greenland millions of years ago are helping scientists to predict the effects of climate change more accurately. Claire Belcher (UCD), who led the work, and colleagues studied 200 million-year-old fossils – which contain remains of dead and burnt plants – have shown that a change in vegetation, along with warmer temperatures and more frequent storms, led to a five-fold increase in natural wildfires in East Greenland at this time. Their study will help scientists to broaden their understanding of past Earth climates and give researchers fresh insight to improve models of the possible effects of future climate change.

Millions of years ago in East Greenland, warming climate and high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere caused plants to evolve from having thick to narrow leaves, which helped prevent them from losing water. Laboratory experiments (in the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering) have shown plants of this shape to be more flammable, and therefore prone to wildfires. The study sheds light on how climate-driven changes in vegetation can cause increases in the flammability of plants. This research may help understanding of whether or not plant life could become more flammable based on global warming estimates.

The work, "in a truly innovative test of their hypothesis, used a Fire Propagation Apparatus calorimeter to test the flammability of modern plant analogues to the Triassic and Jurassic vegetation"

 

 A plant sample of Monkey puzzle being tested for fire behaviour in the Flame Propagation Apparatus calorimeter

The joint research between Fire engineers at the University of Edinburgh and Earth scientists at University College Dublin, the University of Oxford and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, was funded by EU Marie Curie and the University of Edinburgh’s BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering and published in Nature Geoscience. Their work also made it onto the front cover (see illustration bellow).

Cover of the Nature Geoscience issue of June 2010 showing a scientific illustration of Greenland's vegetation 200 Myr ago.

Dr Claire Belcher, of University College Dublin, said:

"We wanted to test a theory that says if atmospheric CO2 doubles, forest fires in North America may increase by 44 per cent. We tested this by studying how ancient plants and fire changed in the past and used modern experiments on living plants – much like those that grew 200 million years ago – to show that under these conditions, plants became more flammable".

Dr Guillermo Rein, co-author of the work, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering, said:

"This research brought together scientists from very different backgrounds, and doing so has given us insights into ancient wildfires that we might otherwise not have had. This is the first time our cutting-edge flammability technology has been applied to test geoscience hypothesis and highlights how new ideas can be formed when scientists from very different backgrounds meet"..

For more information please contact:
Dr Claire Belcher, belchercm (at) gmail.com and see her website

Conference summaries

Conference season has kicked off. Here are my summaries so far.

Fire and Explosion Hazards
Rory Hadden, Nicolas Bal, Freddy Jervis, Albert Simeoni and briefly Guillermo Rein and Ricky Carvel attended the 6th Fire and Explosion Hazards conference in Leeds. The conference was well attended by academia as well as industry.

As usual, the topics covered many aspects of fire with a lot of emphasis on the best methods for extracting material parameters from experiments for use in fire models and the subsequent use of the newly developed FireFOAM code. Plenary lectures on the Buncefield explosion and the dynamics of forest fires related fire sciences to the real world and worked as a good basis for the conference.

An excellent banquet was provided in the rather unique Royal Armouries Museum.

European Geosciences Union
A conference on a different scale from anything in fire; 10 000 delegates descended on Vienna from all corners of the globe. I attended with fire group collaborator Claire Belcher. The conference programme was very dense including everything from climate change to sedimentology. It was interesting to see fire from the point of view of a geoscientist – these sessions were devoted mainly to satellite detection of fires and the role of fire in the earth system. This is fascinating work however, I am certain more could be achieved by raising the profile of fire science in this area and working together with the geoscience community.

2nd International Conference on Coal Fire Research
This brief three day conference in Berlin was the second meeting of the coal fire community under the umbrella of the Sino-German coal fire project. As a relative outsider to the community, I found them inviting and willing to discuss new ideas. Talks covered the whole range of coal fire topics from fundamental fire dynamics to modelling to fire fighting with many interesting case studies in between. The conference also allowed me to meet with the editors of Coal and Peat Fires: A Global Perspective. It seems that over the 6 years that the community has been active, a great deal has been achieved in understanding these fires however, they still remain a challenging and diverse area of study.

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

The Event Horizon

April 22rd – two days after a massive explosion killed 11 people – a photographer captures the final moments of the Deep Water Horizon. The enormous oil rig, crippled by fire and eventually consumed by water, had been drilling an offshore oil well for BP (now investing $100 million in a massive cleanup operation).

Meanwhile the well continue to spill oil, producing a slick that could threaten coastlines along the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite the practical difficulties in doing so, the U.S. coastguard is considering setting fire to the oil slick before it reaches land.

ROVs have been sent down to the enormous 450 ton sub-surface valve but attempts to shut it off have so far failed. An investigation has begun to uncover the cause of the incident. It is unclear if there will be attempts to raise the DW Horizon from the seabed - now 1.5 kilometres down.

ACI Spring Convention...

Every year, twice a year, the American Concrete Institute meets to discuss the latest developments in field of concrete construction and design. This year, the Spring Convention met in Chicago at the beginning of March. Spring had only just sprung, and visitors from around the world gathered to discuss new developments and improvements to the ACI codes and guidelines.

At every convention, the ACI 216 Committee discuss how the fire design guidance can be improved, updated and made more useful. This year, the committee meeting was also coupled with a presentation session where members of the fire research community could present their research.

Two members of Edinburgh's Fire Group made presentations at this Spring's session. Luke Bisby spoke about the performance of pre-stressed steel and fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) bars when subjected to fire, and I spoke about the use of interaction diagrams to predict the capacity of concrete sections during fire.

The following day, Committee 216 got down to the serious business of discussing the latest modifications to the ACI 216.1 design document. Chaired by the perennially entertaining Prof Venkatesh Kodur, there were no major changes either approved or proposed. Discussion centred more on the future direction of the code, and how it compares to other international fire design codes.

Dr Gillie (also from UoE) and Dr Bisby gave a 15 minute presentation on the Eurocodes, presenting the ideas behind the different design fires and the performance based design approach. There was some discussion of the relative merits of the design fire, E119, but also strong criticism of the Eurocode approach from some members of Committee 216.

As someone who had not attended the conference before, I was fascinated to witness the process by which a code is written. I was particularly struck by how long and drawn out the process of changing a document is. Not only were there disagreements between committee members as to what should be changed and how, but there was also the very long process of having the changes and their format approved by the ACI governing body as a whole.

I left Chicago with two conflicting feelings: depression at the pace of change in the States, but also a feeling of respect and optimism for what has been achieved in Europe. The Eurocodes are not perfect, and they have many limitations, unconservatisms and flaws; however, in terms of their philosophical approach, they allow engineers to think deeply and flexibly about the problems at hand.

By Angus Law, 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.

Fire Dynamics during the Channel Tunnel Fires

The following was presented by Ricky Carvel at the 4th International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and Security (ISTSS) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on 19th March 2010.

Presentation part 1 of 2:

Presentation part 2 of 2:

The audio in these clips was recorded live at the conference and has not been edited. The audio was then synched with a video stream of the presenation slides after the event.

Wildfire in Edinburgh!

Yesterday (Sunday 14th March) there was a wildfire on Arthur's Seat - the hill that dominates the Edinburgh skyline. It didn't last long and was successfully controlled within about ten minutes. I was a couple of miles away and took a photo:

Visit of Prof Lyons and seminar on reacting flows

Prof Kevin Lyons from North Carolina State University, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is visiting us on Thurs 18 March and will give a seminar at 1.15pm  in the AGB Seminar Room in the 3rd floor. The title of the talk is "Studies of Turbulent Reacting Flows: Experiments".

Studies of Turbulent Reacting Flows: Experiments by KM Lyons.

Abstract:

Studies are presented that examine a variety of phenomena in jet flames, including current work in flame propagation, hysteresis and blowout.  At a certain jet exit velocity, a flame will lift from the fuel nozzle and stabilize at some downstream position.  The partially-premixed flame front of the lifted flame oscillates in the axial direction, with the oscillations becoming greater in flames stabilized further downstream.  These oscillations are also observed in flames where blowout is imminent.  This work attempts to determine the role of fuel velocity and air co-flow on flame oscillations in both stable and unstable regimes.  The results of video imaging of a lifted methane-air diffusion flame are presented.  Images are used to ascertain the changes in the reaction zone that influence these oscillations and relate the movement to blowout.  Similar studies are presented in studies of upstream flame propagation in jets flames.  If time allows, other work in flame hysteresis, flame hazards in explosions and firefighting situations and the like, will be discussed.

April 9, Combustion Phenomena in Fire Science

Combustion Phenomena in Fire Science

One-day meeting of the Combustion Institute British Section
Fri Apr 9, Edinburgh

The Spring meeting of the British Section of the Combustion Institute will be held at the University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings Campus, Daniel Rutherford Building on Friday 9th April 2010. You can find transport and accommodation information in the website.

The on-line registration and payment system is now activated. Fees are£90. Special fees for Students and Retired members £25, and Members of the Combustion Institute/IOP £50. Go to:

http://www.eng.ed.ac.uk/fire/combustion2010

If you are bringing a poster/s as well, send a title and author names to Rory Hadden .

*Speakers*
Prof Bart Merci, Ghent University, Enclosure fires modelling
Prof Dougal Drysale, University of Edinburgh, 2005 Buncefield explosions
Dr Savio Vianna, University of Cambridge, Accidental explosions modelling
Prof Kai Luo, University of Southampton, Fire suppression modelling
Dr Roger Harrison, University of Canterbury, Fire plumes experiments
Prof Domingos Viegas, University of Coimbra, Forest fires research
Prof John Griffiths, University of Leeds, Lagging fire

International Master in Fire Safety Engineering still open for European candidates

The SFPE has published a blog reminding that European students can apply to the International Master of Science in Fire Safety Engineering until 15 April 2010.

Apply following this link http://www.imfse.ugent.be
IMFSE is a a two-year MSc program leading to a joint degree between the Universities of Edinburgh (UK), Ghent (Belgium) and Lund (Sweden). It starts in Sept 2010.

The classes in the first semester, covering basic topics in Fire Safety Engineering (FSE), can be attended in Ghent or Edinburgh. All students spend the second semester in Lund, where emphasis lies on enclosure fire dynamics, risk analysis and human behaviour. In the third semester, classes are again taught in Ghent (for general FSE) or Edinburgh (with focus on structural engineering in the context of FSE). The fourth semester is devoted to the Master’s thesis, hosted by one or more of the three institutes.

For questions, visit here or e-mail: IMFSE@UGent.be

"major advances in combating fire are unlikely to be achieved simply by continued application of the traditional methods"

The 3rd Fire Behavior and Fuels Conference organized by The International Association of Wildland Fire quotes our dear Emeritus Professor in the first page of the call for papers. This is, indeed, bridging the gap between two fire disciplines.

http://www.iawfonline.org/spokane2010/call_spokane2010.pdf

"Further major advances in combating wildfire are unlikely to be achieved simply by continued application of the traditional methods. What is required is a more fundamental approach which can be applied at the design stage ... Such an approach requires a detailed understanding of fire behaviour ... "

D. Drysdale (1998) - An Introduction to Fire Dynamics (Second edition)

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.

Visit by Dr Fiorucci and seminar on wildfire risk

Paolo Fiorucci from CIMA (Univ. of Genoa, Italy) will give a lunchtime seminar on the 9th of February on "A general framework for wildfire risk assessment and management in Mediterranean area" in the AGB Seminar Room at 1.15 pm. Abstract bellow.

Paolo Fiorucci has a PhD in Environmental Monitoring. He is currently project leader at CIMA. CIMA is a Joint-Foundation between the University of Genoa and the Italian Civil Protection. It supports research in the field of civilian and environmental protection. His research interests focus on forest fire risk assessment and management by means of statistical analysis and dynamic model development. He is author and coauthor of more then 30 papers, 7 published in international refereed journals. He is also teaching assistant from 1997 supporting different courses on Modelling and Simulation, Natural risk management and Forest
Fires within the undergraduate courses on Environmental Engineering and Electronic Engineering at the University of Genoa. He has been and he his Scientific Director of several national and international projects.


A general framework for wildfire risk assessment and management in Mediterranean area

The analysis of time series of burned areas combined with a detailed knowledge of topography, land cover and climate conditions allow understanding which are the main features involved in forest fire occurrences and their behaviour. Based on this information it is possible to develop statistical methods for the objective
classification of forest fire static risk at regional scale. The analysis suggests that fire regime in Mediterranean ecosystem is strictly related with species highly vulnerable to fire but highly resilient, as characterized by a significant regenerative capacity after the fire spreading. Only rarely, and characterized by negligible damage, the fire affects the areas covered by climax species in relation with altitude and soil types (i.e, quercus, fagus, abies). On the basis of these results, it is proved how the simple Drossel-Schwabl Forest Fire Model is able to reproduce the forest fire regime in terms of number of fires and burned area.
On this basis, an experimental propagation model has been developed to provide Italian Civil Protection Department (DPC) with rapid active fire risk assessment maps. The propagation model is based on stochastic cellular automata. The model provides in a fast and simple way realistic scenarios useful for active fire management, highlighting the zones where the fire attack can be more effective. Several case studies proved that the model give better results in case of complex terrain and vegetation mosaic. In case of flat terrain and homogeneous fire dependent vegetation cover, the fire perimeter is mainly determined by meteorological variability (wind speed and direction) and fire attack. In fact, extreme fire hazard situations are strictly related with extreme weather conditions mainly related with very low relative humidity and strong winds. Such extreme situations are generally well defined by Numerical Weather Prediction Models up to 48 h before the event occurs. In this connection Fire Hazard forecast systems are able to anticipate the extreme fire situation up to 48 hours. The system RISICO provides Italian Civil Protection Department (DPC) with daily wildland fire risk forecast maps relevant to the whole national territory since 2003. The RISICO system has a complex software architecture based on a framework able to manage geospatial data as well as time dependent information (e.g, Numerical Weather Prediction, real time meteorological observations, and satellite data). Within the system semi-physical models, able to simulate in space and time the variability of the fuel moisture content, are implemented. This parameter represents the main variable related with the ignition of a fire. Based on this information and introducing information on topography and wind field the model provides the rate of spread and the linear intensity of a potential fire generated by accidental or deliberate ignition. The model takes into account the vegetation patterns, in terms of fuel load and flammability. Integrating in a single framework the complete suite of all the models introduced above it is possible to critically reduce fire risk thus preventing serious environmental damages.

Summer placement at Lothian & Borders Fire Service

“You, come wi’ me, we’ll go cut the door offa car”

Like many final year MEng students I didn't know what I wanted to do after graduation; so when Prof. Torero asked me if I wanted to do a PhD in Fire Engineering I thought, why not?

The only problem was that I had absolutely no idea what “fire engineering” was, so to do a PhD in it seemed a bit far-fetched. I asked what I could do to bring me up to speed. The answer? “Well, you could join the Lothian & Borders Fire Service if you want…”

So in July 2009, a couple of months before I was due to start my PhD, I walked into the Fire HQ with Jonny (a first-year UoE student) to begin our internship. I was wearing a shirt and tie as instructed; I signed in, got a name badge and waited for Bob (the fire-fighter tasked with looking after us for the next 6 weeks).

“Tea?” he says (fire-fighters seem to run on tea). “No? Right let’s head down to the ship.” I was soon to find out that he was referring to the Fire Training Centre – so named for the big old metal ship sitting in the back yard. After another cup of tea and a safety brief, we were kitted out with equipment and breathing apparatus (BA). By 10am we were following an instructor through smoke-filled compartments. We spent the next week crawling around that ship through heat, smoke, dirt and water, watching the fire fighters at work and doing some fire fighting ourselves. It was awesome.

On day three we were sitting in on a fire safety lecture when the boss opened the door, pointed at the two of us and said: “You two! Come with me.” He then turned to the instructor giving the lecture and said: “They won’t be back.” The next thing you know we were fully geared up in BA, blindfolded and put through the “crawling cages” – a sort of pitch-black, claustrophobic assault course. A wee bitty mental, but otherwise great fun.

The internship allowed us to see every part of what the fire service do. We got to take part in fire investigation, public education and a water rescue (involving wetsuits, ropes, a fast-flowing river and of course, a BBQ). We were even driven down the runways of Edinburgh Airport in a £750,000 fire engine.

By far the best part of the internship was being “on the run” at Sighthill fire station (I don’t think I ever really got over the novelty of the pole). Every day we would be called out to incidents or get to try out a new piece of equipment, ranging from ladders to foam cannons to the jaws-of-life. I’ll never forget it when a fire-fighter turned to me and said: “you, come wi’ me, we’ll go cut the door off a car.”

If nothing else, my internship with the fire service gave me a story to tell; sure I got an introduction into the world of fire engineering, but more importantly I got to live out every 5-year-old schoolboy's dream - to be a fireman! It was awesome.

by Mike Woodrow, 1st year PhD student

Visit by Dr Oliveras and seminar on fire dynamics and carbon losses

Dr. Imma Oliveras, environmental scientist at the University of Oxford, is visiting the fire group and will give a seminar to IIE on 4 Feb at 1pm in the Alexander Graham Bell Bldg (seminar room, 3rd floor).


Dr Oliveras is a Post Doctoral Research Associate working on the dynamics and carbon implications of fires. She is interested on how human-induced disturbances affect ecological processes, and implications for climate change and biodiversity conservation. She has studied the cloud forests of the Peruvian Andes, the Brazilian savannah grasslands and the Mediterranean ecosystems.


Seminar abstract:

FIRE DYNAMICS AND ASSOCIATED CARBON LOSSES IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES

Dr. Imma Oliveras
School of Geography and the Environment
University of Oxford


In the Andes, humid Tropical Montane Cloud Forests (TMCFs) sit immediately below highly flammable, high altitude dry grasslands (the puna) that have suffered from recurrent anthropogenic fires for millennia, with the treeline sitting at approximately 3000 m. This treeline is a zone of ecological and climatic tension: on the one hand, rising temperatures and cloud heights may have a tendency to push the ecotone upwards, encouraging forest expansion into the puna. On the other hand, increased aridity in the puna (driven by rising temperates and evapotranspiration, and possibly by reducing precipitation), coupled with intensified human pressure, is increasing fire occurrence and penetration into the cloud forest. This research project aims analyze the fire dynamics of this treeline, and to perform accurate estimates to carbon losses due to combustion by combining fire satellite detection, on-ground observations and experimental tests.

Christmas Tree Fire Safety

This is a fire test of a Christmas tree carried out in our lab. The tree had been in the home of one of our research students for a few weeks over Christmas time. No accelerants were used, this is simply the burning of the tree, ignited by a single candle which was allowed to burn down. The candle burned for 18 uneventful minutes before the start of the video clip.

The peak heat release rate of the fire was about 2.5 MW!

Please be careful with candles on Christmas trees next year!

Visiting researcher at Tokyo University of Science

Our PhD student Sung-Han Koo has been awarded an International Young Researcher Scholarship which will fund a 3-month visit to the Center for Fire Science and Technology in the Research Institute for Science and Technology at Tokyo University of Science, Japan.