One of the largest unknowns in structural fire engineering design is the fire itself, particularly in large internal environments, where real fires have been observed to travel around the floor plate. Several methodologies have been proposed to characterise these fires, most of which rely on the separation of the fire exposure into two so-called fields - near and far – allowing simplifying assumptions

In order to study fire behavior of composites used in the aeronautic field, a kerosene-flame burner has been designed and built allowing to thermally stress one side of small samples with a flame, reproducing the scenario of an engine fire. The burner has been optimized to obtain the same conditions as in standard tests, flame temperature of 1100°C and heat flux of 116 kW/m2. During the tests, the

The rheological behavior of alcohol-resistant foam concentrates and its impact on pipe flows play critical roles in the scientific design of foam fire-extinguishing systems. In the present work, the equilibrium flow curve, yield stress and thixotropy of alcohol-resistant foam concentrates are experimentally studied, and the effects of the yield stress and thixotropy on pipe flows are theoretically

The paper presents the development of an innovative cost-effective fire protection system for steel columns, which is quick and easy to install and to dismantle. In terms of assembly, this protection is designed to be a plug-and-play system, which is made of two U-shaped half-protections that encapsulate a column. They are composed of high-density rock wool boards arranged in U-shape steel sheets presenting

The performance of commercial intumescent coatings is assessed by industrial norms and standards with clearly defined experimental conditions. In contrast, academic research on intumescent coatings is much more diverse and there are no clear guidelines on how such coatings should be characterised. Some researchers transfer the conditions defined in the industrial standards to laboratory-scale setups

The creation of alternative fuels to reduce CO2 emissions in the aeronautical sector necessitates the determination of their safety properties, among which are their Flammability Limits. Synthesized Iso-Paraffins (SIP) are blending components that have already been approved for blending with traditional aviation fuel by up to 10 vol%. Therefore, this manuscript is aimed at experimentally determining

Fire Safety Engineering is often implemented within a framework that requires a recognized and recognizable profession. This article reviews the current state of various attributes that define Fire Safety Engineering as a profession. It is argued that: 1) reliance on prescriptive solutions opens the domain to practitioners that do not possess the required specialist knowledge; 2) the fire safety engineering

Aluminum alloy shells are increasingly used in public buildings as a supporting structure for roofing enclosure construction in large spaces. In performance-based fire protection design, an empirical design criterion of 150 °C and relevant empirical formulas are used; however, the safety margin and prediction effect are not verified through full-scale experiments, and therefore, the effect of the roof

This study explores an instrumentation strategy using distributed fiber optic sensors to measure strain and temperature through the concrete volume in large-scale structures. Single-mode optical fibers were deployed in three 12.8 m long steel and concrete composite floor specimens tested under mechanical or combined mechanical and fire loading. The concrete slab in each specimen was instrumented with

The properties of steel material become dependent on the temperature and duration of heating during a fire event. Thermal creep strain is a time-dependent plastic deformation that becomes significant under constant load and high temperatures. The goal of this study is to understand the thermal creep effect on the behavior of a beam-column flush end-plate connection subjected to transient fire conditions

This paper presents the details and analysis of a fire test conducted on a stainless steel cellular beam, as well as the development of a finite element model to further study the behavior. Cellular beams are increasingly popular in the construction as they provide a structurally and materially efficient design solution as well as allowing the passage of services. Their behavior in fire can be challenging

This paper presents the experimental findings on fire resistance of concrete encased steel (CES) composite columns made of C120 concrete and S500/S690 high-strength steel section. Eight full-scale CES columns were tested under concentrated load and heated under the ISO834 fire until failure. The fire performance of each CES column specimen was evaluated by analysing the fire resistance time, axial

This paper presents a systematic experimental investigation to explore the effect of incorporating discarded hybrid steel fibers (DSF) on the rheological, mechanical, and hardened properties of high strength self-compacting concrete (HSCC). This study also covers the effect of elevated temperatures (300 °C, 500 °C, and 700 °C) in the furnace with a heating time of 2 h on residual mechanical and hardened

Firefighters perform search operations during fires in order to rescue people. Full-scale tests to evaluate the effectiveness of the techniques used to search a room have been organized in the absence of fire. 42 search crews completed 7 different set-ups. The crews consisted of Belgian and Dutch firefighters as trained to date. They searched four 12 m2 bedrooms and three 31 m2 office spaces. Searching

Based on the performance of Q550 (yield strength fy = 550 MPa) high-strength steel, mechanical property tests at room temperature and elevated temperatures were first carried out. Second, fire tests were carried out on 8 unconstrained Q550 high-strength steel columns with rectangular sections under axial compression. The mechanical properties and failure modes of high-strength steel columns under fire

The corner fire characteristics with two inert walls are compared against those with one or two combustible corner walls through a set of standard Single Burning Item (SBI) tests. The study examines how the corner fire behavior is affected by flame spread over one or two walls. In the case of flame spread over one corner wall, the inert side is a Calcium Silicate (CS) panel. As for the combustible

Backdrafts are violent events that occur when oxygen is suddenly introduced to an oxygen-depleted compartment fire and are primarily driven by the presence of gravity currents. However, with human travel potentially expected beyond the confines of earth gravity, it is not clear how the magnitude of the gravity constant can contribute to the intensity of these events. This issue can be relevant when

This paper examines the effectiveness of the smoke alarm obligation to reduce the fire risk in residential/domestic applications. This aspiration to improve fire safety has led to the introduction of the smoke alarm obligation into the building codes of several countries. The example chosen for analysis was the situation in Germany, because this case is to be considered highly informative as the mandatory

Explosions can occur in different oxidizer atmospheres in confined spaces, which should be given attention in regard to the fire safety in process industries. In this study, experiments were carried out in a closed cylindrical vessel (7.3 L) to compare the explosion behaviors of hydrogen (H2) and ethylene (C2H4) with air, nitrous oxide (N2O), and oxygen (O2) at various equivalence ratios. The initial

This paper presents the results of tests to investigate fire performance of two-way restrained precast concrete (PC) composite slabs under the standard ISO 834 condition. The fire tests include three specimens with different load levels and boundary conditions – with or without restraints around the edges. Tensile membrane action was observed to a moderate extent in all specimens tested, including

Light gauge steel frame (LSF) floor-ceiling systems are increasingly used in buildings without a full understanding of their thermal and fire resistance performance. Hence a numerical study was undertaken on the thermal performance of LSF floor-ceiling systems with varying configurations under standard fire conditions. The configurations included Lipped Channel and rivet fastened Rectangular Hollow

Fire interactions between multiple 1 m tall, 0.7 m diameter chamise shrubs was studied utilizing the Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Dynamics Simulator (WFDS, Mell et al., 2009). Two shrub arrangements were investigated. First, nine shrubs were placed in a 3×3 horizontal region. The shrub separation distance and wind speed were varied. Two competing interaction mechanisms were identified: heat feedback

Fire stations play an important role in improving firefighting capabilities, and their service areas should be determined based on the travel times from each fire station to the surrounding fire risk points. Based on real-time travel time data extracted from online maps, we developed a dynamic estimation system for fire station service areas called FSSA v1.0 and integrated it with the boundary search

Hot-zone boilover is dangerous in crude oil tank fires. Previous investigations have experimentally shown that floating objects can suppress hot-zone boilover with small scale pool fires, but not indicate a clear suppression mechanism. Thus, this study uses floating perlites (0, 1 and 2 layers) on large scale pool fires to examine the mechanism by performing three series of experiments. The first series

In the present experiment we evaluated the impact of rapid heat stress on decision-making and neural function. Previous work has demonstrated that heat stress has an impact on cognitive and neural function. Here, we hypothesized that a rapid increase in heat stress would result in reduced decision-making ability evidenced by a reduction in frontal theta electroencephalographic (EEG) power. Fifteen

Flaming ignition properties of dead and live thin wildland porous fuels submitted to different incident heat flux intensities are examined experimentally using a cone calorimeter. Data are compared to analytical and numerical results of a model that uses an energy balance and includes energy and temperature ignition criteria. The model provides the linear trend of ignition time for large heat flux

The weighted multi-point source model (WMP) has been proposed to model flame radiation from far to near distances, encompassing regions where the single point (SP) model cannot predict it adequately. To develop its formulation, the WMP has been studied as an inverse problem, being optimised to minimise the error between experimental and numerical data. Efficient optimisation methods are thus necessary

This work summarises the key points that can be drawn from the extensive body of literature associated with fire risk indexing methods. A comprehensive definition of fire risk indexing is provided and the sometimes opaque mechanics of indexing are described in detail. Issues arising from fire risk indexing methods are explored, and the variety of terminology associated with this method is clarified

Traditional prescriptive requirements for structural fire design do not explicitly ensure the load bearing capacity of the structure up to and including burnout. Therefore, a deterministic design method is presented, which enables to perform a quick check of the burnout bending resistance of a concrete slab exposed to a natural fire, and allows for the evaluation of (delayed) bending failure that can

When attempting to suppress severe wildfire the possibility for firefighting crews to be overrun by wildfire, known as entrapment and burnover, remains a catastrophic and all too common occurrence. While improvements have been made to vehicle protection systems to increase the safety of firefighters caught in burnover, the potential effectiveness of these systems remains limited. This study involved

A systematic visualisation system that can image the visible flame, invisible hot gas and the wood surface temperature, was applied to study self-sustained fire propagation in a wood rod at different inclination angles. It was found that the burned wood rods at positive inclination angles presented longer burning lifetimes and charring lengths than those at negative and horizontal angles. Three physical

Numerous experiments have been conducted to investigate the mechanical properties of structural steels at elevated temperatures, including mild steel and high strength steel (HSS). However, material models in the current mainstream fire design standards are mainly based on results of mild steel, and hence their applicability to HSS is questionable. In this paper, test data in literatures on mechanical

This study reports an experimental exploration of the combustion inhibition efficiency of iron short-chain perfluorocarboxylates, namely, iron trifluoroacetate (FeTFA) and iron pentafluoropropionate (FePFP). The aim is to develop a new phosphor-free fire-extinguishing agent. The synthesized FeTFA and FePFP were characterized by ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy

This paper evaluates the fuel moisture content (FMC) threshold that leads to fire extinction for a few fuel types under marginal conditions. Influences of fuel load, fuel depth, Leaf Area Index (LAI) and packing ratio on this FMC threshold were also analyzed. This aim was reached by applying numerical simulations performed with three approaches: a simplified physical fire spread model, a detailed fire

The effects of air intake position on the burning behaviour of liquid pool inside a mechanically ventilated compartment are analyzed by using both an experiment and a physics-based model. A series of compartment fire experiments has been undertaken from a reduced scale enclosure with a length/height and width of 2 m. An external ventilation system consists of an air admission duct placed in low or

The paper presents a theoretical study on the ceiling jets induced by small fires in tunnels. The ceiling jet thickness, temperature rise and velocity are analyzed theoretically with Non-Boussinesq approximation. The study focuses on the radial and one-dimensional ceiling jets. Numerical solutions in radial region and one-dimensional shooting region are obtained and new analytical solutions in the

In recent years several studies analysed the influence of recycled aggregates obtained from concrete debris (Recycled Concrete Aggregates, RCAs) on the durability performance of structural concrete produced with them (Recycled Aggregate Concretes, RACs) and, within this, also the influence of high temperatures has been investigated. In most cases, the concrete strength has not been considered as a

The data generated in buildings are used for all types of purposes. The quality of information used in assisting people to escape an emergency situation is of importance. In practice today, none of the data-generating systems that aid in the escape from emergency situations is validated on a regular basis. This study is based on the smart building concept. The rationale behind this concept is to provide

Video-based smoke detection is a challenging task due to the large variance of smoke color, brightness and shape. Handcrafting discriminative features for smoke detection is a complicated and expensive task, which cannot represent smoke characteristics accurately. There are some smoke detection methods based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), but most of them are computationally expensive and

Leader-and-follower behaviour is one of the most important behaviours during evacuation, as determining the effect of leader-and-follower behaviour in social networks on crowd evacuation during emergency situations is important for enhancing safety. In this study, four experiments with two social groups involving 81 participants were conducted. Before the experiments, participants were asked to respond

In large crude oil tank farm, fire is a major primary event in domino effects according to past accidents. The quantitative risk assessment of domino fire accident is a key issue for the accident prevention of large storage tank farm. The most widely used equation for the estimation of the tank's time to failure (TTF) exposed to pool fire is not suitable for 100,000 m3 external floating roof tank.

Thermally-thin compartment fire studies are a reasonable approach to understand fire dynamics in informal settlements, where dwellings built with such materials (e.g. steel sheets) are commonly found. Since the number of people living in informal settlements is growing (currently over 1 billion), fire safety engineering research is of major importance for reducing fire occurrence, loss of life, livelihood

In fire flames scalar dissipation rates in the reaction zone are low and radiation becomes important for extinction. The chemistry mechanism also strongly affects extinction and CO formation. The present study applies the unsteady laminar flamelet approach (or, equivalently, the conditional moment closure (CMC) method in mixture fraction domain, without transport in physical space). Six chemistry mechanisms

In the recent past, the necessity to have a better understanding of fire dynamics and of the full structural response under real fires was the motivation for several large-scale non-standard fire tests. Nowadays, the novel need to better comprehend the fire dynamics behind the so called “travelling fires” underlined the limitations of those non-standard fire tests. The lack of standardised procedures

In this study, a series of experiments were conducted with varying number of pool fires and opening location (floor with ventilation openings) in a 21-story full-scale office building to study the transport phenomena and stratification of hot smoke in the stairwell. The experiments show that the flame of the pool fire inclines away from the side lobby door as pushed by the side air entrainment. The

This work studied flame spread over polyethylene (PE)-insulated wires at high pressure with an emphasis on the effect of ambient pressure. Laboratory simulated wires were used as a tested wire, which consisted of semi-transparent low-density PE (LDPE) tube as an insulation and copper (Cu) rod or stainless-steel (SS) tube as a core. Increasing ambient pressure produced much soot, leading to an intensively

Although there has been a lot of work on ignition times at constant imposed heat flux and on steady creeping flame spread, no definite results exist for the effect of material thickness on these phenomena, specifically away from purely thermally thick or thermally thin conditions. In this work, we first demonstrate, concentrating on the thermal ignition regime, that creeping flame spread can be cast

In this study, the smoke control for fire situations in tunnels with naturally ventilated shafts was studied based on a 1/20 reduced-scale tunnel model, and the effects of the longitudinal fire location, shaft settings, and heat release rate (HRR) on the smoke control were discussed. The experimental results show that a worst longitudinal fire location for smoke control exists. Moreover, the critical

The conditional moment closure (CMC) method is applied in combination with large eddy simulations (LES-CMC) to the UMD line burner configuration. This corresponds to a low-strain, buoyant diffusion flame. The low strain rate conditions are representative of fire conditions and the aim of the study is to evaluate LES-CMC results, including radiative effects. Only conditions far from extinction are studied

Meta-modeling helps to reduce the computational cost of large-scale stochastic simulations. It, however, brings froth additional uncertainty in the prediction. In this work, we illustrate the use of the Response Surface Method (RSM) and Gaussian Process (GP) regression to approximate the cold-side temperature of a fire barrier in a stochastic compartment fire scenario. The deterministic model is a

Guaranteeing the integrity of tunnel structures during and after fire is key in support of a sound fire safety strategy and for minimizing the risk of disruption in the operation of the tunnel due to restauration works post-fire. Innovations in concrete technology have enabled what is known as Fibre Reinforced Concrete (FRC); where very small fibres are used to substitute traditional reinforcement

In addition to classical compartment fire development stages, smoke explosions can occur for underventilated conditions while the ventilation openings remain the same. Smoke explosions are different from backdrafts, involving changes in ventilation by additional openings. In this study, the burning history of medium-density fibre (MDF) cribs located at three different elevations has been investigated

Thin intumescent coating (IC) are nowadays the dominant passive system used to protect structural steel in case of fire. This paper proposes a general procedure for modelling intumescent coating in both simplified and advanced calculation methods, starting from lab-scale test results. The small-scale tests were useful for identifying the parameters that mostly can affect the behaviour of the IC under

A potentially dangerous fire event that can occur in road tunnels is a gasoline tanker fire, where flammable liquid fuel spills on the tunnel roadbed and catches fire. In the USA typically, the water density required for fixed firefighting systems is based on NFPA 13 and the minimum ventilation is based on smoke back layering. This work calculates the required water density based on the tunnel geometry

This paper presents both experimental and mesoscale modeling results of the direct tensile behaviour of two carbon TRC composites at elevated temperatures ranging from 25 °C to 600 °C. Two reinforcement carbon textiles were manufactured industrially in the factory with different geometries and treatment products to improve the textile/matrix bond. For the numerical approach, the input data of the numerical

A detailed understanding of flame radiation is useful in numerous fire applications, and can be improved through experiments and modelling: the work presented here is a contribution to both aspects. Data were gathered for kerosene pool fires (30–250 cm wide), in order to characterise the flame geometry and emission. It was shown that the average visible flame can be well approximated by a conical shape

At elevated temperatures, the mechanical properties of high strength steel (HSS) reported in the literature have an observable scatter. They differ from design code values that are mainly based on experiments on mild steel. In this paper, the mechanical properties of S700 MC at elevated temperatures were investigated with steady state and transient state tensile tests. The reduction factors of yield