Combustion Institute British Spring Meeting 2010 - Combustion Phenomena in Fire Science

One-Day Meeting on Combustion Phenomena in Fire Science

Combustion Institute British Section: Spring Meeting 2010

Minutes by Stephen Welch, July 2010

BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, The University of Edinburgh

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

Seven invited speakers from home and abroad represented research interests spanning experimental studies and modelling of fire phenomena.  The meeting opened with a good context setting talk on “Enclosure fires modelling: where are we and where are we going?”, by Prof Bart Merci of Ghent University.  The capabilities of models are progressively advancing but equally if not more important is the knowledge of the user.  Options to increase knowledge of FSE were discussed and the value of Masters programmes in Fire Safety Engineering emphasised. The complexity of fire phenomena and the strong dependence of fire development on details of the input must be recognised. The need for systematic validation exercises working up from simple cases, and recognising measurement uncertainties, remains vital.  Discussion focussed on the problem of models validated for benchscale scenarios being misused in other large-scale applications.

The current limits of our knowledge became rapidly apparent in the next talk on the Buncefield incident by Dougal Drysdale, emeritus professor at Edinburgh University.  Lavishly illustrated by impressive images of tank fires and explosion aftermath, Dougal highlighted a number of thought-provoking aspects of the incident: the possibility that the vapour had been ignited by the pumps turned on to disperse it, with initially puzzling damage features elucidated as pertaining to the reverse flow in the rarefaction wave, all pointing at the pumphouse, and the environmental impact of the use of remaining stocks of old foam concentrate, which had been banned from further use.  The severity and exact nature of the explosion has still not been satisfactorily resolved via modelling studies that were completed with Cartesian hedgerows. Despite opinions expressed at the time that this incident was unique and could never happen again Dougal noted that there have recently been two more of a similar nature.  Hedgerows may indeed have had a role in providing turbulence generation mechanisms and perhaps we need to consider their removal!

Dove-tailing nicely with Dougal’s conclusions, Dr Savio Vianna of Cambridge University picked up the theme of dealing with complex geometries in accidental explosion modelling.  Peak pressures have been well predicted in a range of applications using a Modified Porosity Distributed Resistance (MPDR) model for approximating the flow effects due to complex obstructions (thus potentially of value for Dougal’s hedgerows?!).  Work is ongoing on addressing further aspects of the combustion modelling and the impact of suppression phenomena via deluge and micromist systems.

With another slick progression Prof Kai Luo of Southampton University then took us deeper into the challenges of modelling fire suppression.  Liquid phase effects tend to invalidate most of our existing modelling tools for diffusion flames and attempting to include them we are immediately confronted by severe computational challenges.  Nevertheless, by adopting an Eulerian-Lagrangian Approach with an LES/DNS framework valuable insights into mechanisms have now been achieved – highlighting the need to supply sufficiently small drops which are able to effectively reach the reaction zones and the fact that the cooling effects are dominant over dilution and direct kinetic impacts.  Thus fine mists with large evaporation enthalpies will tend to be most effective but optimum droplet size is dependent on the nature of the fire flows.

Having exhausted the topic of suppression we returned to fluid dynamics and the particular problems of entrainment of air into thermal spill plumes, studied in great detail by Dr Roger Harrison in his work at the University of Canterbury.  These are very relevant practical problems for design of large public spaces but hitherto the spill plume formulae have been constrained by insufficient empirical knowledge, and the application of advanced numerical models, i.e. CFD, limited by other uncertainties.  It was found that spill plume behaviour and entrainment are dependent on the characteristics of the layer flow below the spill edge.  Roger’s work has also resulted in a range of new and improved simplified design formulae for a variety of spill plume scenarios and new guidance on the use of CFD models for these applications.

Coming back to fundamental fire phenomena, Prof John Griffiths of Leeds University addressed the topic of lagging fires, a common problem in industrial environments when potentially flammable fluids leak from pipe work into the surrounding insulation material. Such fires may have devasting consequences, and are neglected at our peril!  The participating phenomena are highly complex, but John’s experimental, numerical and theoretical investigations have revealed the role of different processes related to the nature of the combustion (gas or liquid phase) and the dependence on the fluid properties in interaction with the heating environment, i.e. the energetic effects of vaporisation and the possibility of fluid and vapour movement and recondensation within the porous media. Thus fuel volatility, overlooked in previous studies with mainly involatile liquids, is a key parameter.

The day concluded with a wide-ranging talk on Forest Fire Research by Prof Domingos Viegas of the University of Coimbra.  We were informed of the fundamental experimental research on fire spread dependencies which have clarified basic sensitivities to effects of wind and slope.  At full-scale level the role of convection is vital.  The mechanisms involved in spot fires have been individually examined and fire tornados have been studied in the lab and at full-scale.  The concept of eruptive fire behaviour was described, and the extreme dangers arising from sudden transitions in fire development illustrated by a number of sobering case studies.  The talk concluded with lessons learned from the Australian fires in Victoria in 2009, which claimed 173 lives and destroyed 4000 km² within 10 hours. 

All of the talks (downloadable*) raised our awareness of the potentially serious consequences of fire in various arenas and the challenge to the fire community in furthering our understanding and knowledge of the fundamental underpinning fire phenomena.  We add to this our responsibility to educate and inform and clearly we have our work cut out and much to do.  In concluding the meeting the awards committee recognised some of the outstanding work already being done in these areas in conferring the best poster awards to  Dr A Snegirev of Saint-Petersburg State Polytechnic University, for his work on modelling spray fires, and to Jamie Stern-Gottfried et al. of Edinburgh University/Arup, for his studies of non-homogeneous fire environments.

Minutes by Stephen Welch, July 2010

BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, The University of Edinburgh

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

PROGRAMME of Invited Speakers:

	Time	Speaker	From	Topic
	10.15	Registration, coffee/tea and poster setup
	10.55	Welcome
	11.00	Prof Bart Merci	Ghent University	Enclosure fires modelling
	11.40	Prof Dougal Drysdale	University of Edinburgh	2005 Buncefield oil depot explosions
	12.20	Dr Savio Vianna	University of Cambridge	Accidental explosions modelling
	13.00	Lunch and Poster Session
	14.10	Prof Kai Luo	University of Southampton	Fire suppression modelling
	14.50	Dr Roger Harrison	University of Canterbury	Fire plume experiments
	15.30	Coffee/tea and Poster Session
	16.10	Prof John Griffiths	University of Leeds	Lagging fires: Experimental, numerical and theoretical investigations.
	16.50	Prof Domingos Viegas	University of Coimbra	Forest fires research
	17.30	Best Poster Awards
	17.35	Close

Meeting Co-sponsored by IOP Combustion Physics Group

One-day Conference: Emerging Technologies in Combustion, 29 Sept

Emerging Technologies in Combustion
29 September 2010
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh


[website]

The Autumn meeting of IOP Combustion Physics Group will take place at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, on 29 September 2010. This one-day meeting will cover current and emerging technologies in Combustion in industry and academia. The topics will include, Clean Combustion; Coal Combustion; Carbon Capture and Storage and biochar; Underground Coal Gasification; Methane Hydrate; and Soil contaminant remediation.

Organised by the IOP Combustion Physics Group
(co-sponsored by the Combustion Institute British Section)

More information here.

Programme:

09:15	Registration and Coffee
09:45	Welcome to HWU, Edinburgh, Prof. James Ritchie
Morning Section Section Chair: Professor David Fowler, NERC, Edinburgh
10:00	Clean Combustion: The Challenge!Prof Doug Greenhalgh, Heriot-Watt University
10:30	Topic: To be decided Mr. Richard Dennis, Doosan Babcock
11:00	Carbon Capture and Storage: current status and implications for combustion technologies Prof. Jon Gibbins, University Edinburgh
11:30	Tea
11:45	Methane Hydrate: The Burning SnowballProf. Bahman Tohidi (Heriot-Watt University)
12:15	Discussion, Chair: Prof. David Fowler
12:30	Lunch
Afternoon section Session Chair: Dr. Guillermo Rein (University of Edinburgh)
13:40	Underground Coal GasificationDr Richard Marsh, Cardiff University
14:10	Biochar as a Climate Change Mitigation Technology and Adaptation measure - promises and challenges of its deploymentDr. Ondrej Masek, University of Edinburgh
14:40	Combustion Technology for the Remediation of Industrial Soil Pollution: Environmental Benefits from Combustion ScienceDr Christine Switzer, University of Strathclyde
15:10	The combustion of fossil fuels in novel power cycles capable of capturing CO2 suitable for sequestrationDr. John Dennis, University of Cambridge
15:40	Discussion section Chair: Dr. Guillermo Rein, University of Edinburgh
16:10	Tea, Close

Prof Torero elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering

Congratulations to Prof Jose Torero on being elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).  FREngs are UK's leading engineers and a unique national resource.

Prof Mike Forde said "This is an incredibly competitive award and reflects Jose's personal engineering achievements related to advances in structural behaviour in fire, material flammibility, tunnel fire safety,  contaminant remediation technology and sensor driven emergency response. It also recognises Jose's engineering contributions as an advisor to industry and governments worldwide".

Official announcement can be read here: Academy elects 'unique national resource' to assist in economic recovery, RAEng News Release, 08 July 2010

Conference Report: Interflam 2010 at Nottingham

The 12th Interflam conference took place from 5 to 7th July 2010 at Nottingham, UK. Some 130 papers and over 70 poster paper were presented. It was well attended by individuals both from research institutions and industry.


Edinburgh presented four papers and one poster, and was represented by
David Rush, Nicolas Bal, Jamie Stern-Gottfried, Freddy Jervis, Luke Bisby and Guillermo Rein.

There was only one plenary talk, the Keynote Lecture by M Janssens that opened the conference on Monday morning. It focused on Interflam's past, with plenty of statistics about old papers and historical topics. It was a lost opportunity to inspire the incoming generation of researchers.



There were many excellent papers presented, specially on pyrolysis modelling and compartment fires. But overall, the best element at Interflam was the lively discussions experienced at most sessions.


Event organisation was flawless and the venue very comfortable. Only complains mentioned were the low quality accommodations (student dorms) and the very high conference fees.

AXA Fellowship and NFPA Scholarship go to Edinburgh fire researchers

Congratulations to Adam and Jamie!

Dr Adam Cowlard was awarded a 2010 Post-doctoral Fellowships from AXA Research Fund for a proposal to study the burning behaviour of wildland fuels and improve wildfire risk calculations. AXA grants are to "uphold the emergence of the world's scientific leaders".

and


Jamie Stern-Gottfried is the recipient of the 2010 David B. Gratz Scholarship from the National Fire Protection Association in USA. The funds ($5000 USD) are to travel to international conferences overseas and present his thesis work on the role of travelling fires in the structural design of large buildings. This is the fourth Gratz Scholarship that goes to Edinburgh since it was created in 1997.
This scholarship is named for David B. Gratz, the NFPA’s first executive director for international operations, a position he held for 22 years. The scholarship is awarded to recognize the growth of fire science and fire engineering programs. The award was covered by Security Info Watch News.

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.