Australia has the most significant wildfire problem in Oceania, with in excess of 50,000 wildfires per annum on average, and an average of 500,000 km2 of land burnt by wildfires annually across the nation. Each year a number of these wildfires also affect the built environment at the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Each year in Australia, 84 dwellings are destroyed by wildfires on average, albeit historically

Fire spread occurs via radiation, flame contact, and firebrands. While firebrand showers are known to be a cause of spot fires which ignite fuels far from the main fire front, in the case of short distance spot fires, radiation from the main fire may play a role for firebrand induced ignition processes. Many past investigations have focused on singular effects on fire spread, and little is known about

In this study, a 100 m2 steel tank was used to simulate transformer oil fires, with an aim of investigating the burning characteristics of a large-scale pool fire. To recover a real thermal state of transformer oil in operation, a heating system was employed to raise the initial fuel temperature. In total, three fire-extinguishing tests were performed using two delivery methods, i.e., a hand-held fire

Stringent fire safety regulations have limited the use of green biocomposites in practical applications due to vulnerability of their constituents to heat and fire. To counter this weakness, several flame-retardant treatments and techniques have been introduced, such as halogenated and non-halogenated flame-retardants, nano fillers, layered silicates, copolymerization, grafting, and synergistic use

Based on evidence from previous studies, fire mortality rates among older adults on a local level seem to be related two dimensions; population vulnerability and societal protection. In this paper, we investigate the magnitude of the impacts of variation along these two dimensions on the rate of fatal fires involving at least one older adult (65 + years) in Swedish municipalities. Our empirical strategy

Preventing thermal runaway propagation is critical to improve the fire safety of electric vehicles. Experiments are conducted on the designed battery modules to study the effects of aerogel, liquid cooling plate, and their combination on the prevention mechanism of thermal runaway propagation. The characteristics of temperature, voltage, mass loss, and venting during the thermal runaway propagation

Battery explosion incidents hinder the development and application of Li-ion batteries. This paper describes the use of nondestructive computed tomography (CT) to analyze cylindrical Li-ion battery samples that underwent thermal runaway and exploded. Unlike destructive analysis methods, which can lead to a loss of battery structural information, CT scan allows direct observation of a battery’s internal

Fuel load is a crucial parameter for evaluating design fires for buildings. However, the availability of fuel load data is currently hindered by the lack of an efficient on-site data collection method. This research develops a new methodology for fuel load surveys that can facilitate the collection, storage, and analysis of fuel load data for a variety of building occupancies. The new survey method

The conditions under which auto-extinction of timber can occur are of particular importance for mass timber structures where elements of structural timber are exposed, or become exposed, during a fire. Using experiments on 95 mm cubes of timber, the sensitivity of auto-extinction to sample orientation, and an imposed flow across the surface of the sample was investigated. It was found that the variation

In recent years, due to global warming, we have witnessed an increase in the occurrence of extreme forest fire events, with corresponding rise in human fatalities and damage costs. In 2017, in Portugal alone, more than 100 people lost their lives due to forest fires. This tragedy also hit other regions such as California, Greece or Australia. These losses tend to increase, and human means are becoming

CEN and NFPA have expanded the application of water mist in open environments from light solid combustible fire hazards to several in the higher hazard categories. A previous analysis and test evaluation showed that such application expansion is feasible, provided that the water mist spray meets droplet size and application density requirements for the intended fire challenge. However, this evaluation

Upward flame spread is the most rapid and hazardous of the different modes of flame spread. Moreover, studies on the effects of ambient parameters on flame spread are very important for fire safety on spacecraft systems. Therefore, the effects of pressure (0 kPa to 70 kPa), oxygen mole fraction (0.30 to 0.90) and sample width (0.3 cm to 2 cm) on upward flame spread over thin papers were studied. A

Residential fires pose threats to living environments, generating costs to health and property. Understanding the roles of human behavior and social organization in determining fire occurrence is important for developing strategies to manage fire risk. This paper tests the impact of daylight saving time (DST) transitions on dwelling fire occurrence. DST transitions affect sleep patterns, impairing

The fire accidents caused by the thermal runaway of lithium-ion battery has extremely impeded the development of electric vehicles. With the purpose of evaluating the fire hazards of the electric vehicle, a full-scale thermal runaway test of the real lithium-ion battery pack is conducted in this work. The experimental process can be divided into three stages according to the combustion behavior. (1)

This paper discusses application of a new methodology that facilitates fuel load surveys in buildings. The methodology consists of four steps comprising digital inventory, data organization, item matching through computer vision, and fuel load estimation, and is programmed into a digitized surveying application. The present paper applies the methodology to three office buildings and provides the results

This review is focused on video flame and smoke based fire detection algorithms for both indoor and outdoor environments. It analyzes and discusses them in a taxonomical manner for the last two decades. These are mainly based on handcraft features with or without classifiers and deep learning approaches. The separate treatment is provided for detecting flames and smoke. Their static and dynamic characteristics

Research on the performance of personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Fire Service is challenged by the ability to repeatedly and feasibly test new designs, interventions and wear trials in realistic conditions that appropriately simulate end use environments. To support firefighter PPE research and firefighter PPE acclimation/training, a multidisciplinary team has developed a low cost, easily

The article Analysis of Changing Residential Fire Dynamics and Its Implications on Firefighter Operational Timeframes, written by Stephen Kerber, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on December 8, 2011, without open access.

The article Analysis of One and Two-Story Single Family Home Fire Dynamics and the Impact of Firefighter Horizontal Ventilation, written by Stephen Kerber, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on August 29, 2012, without open access.

Structural fire protection design in the United States is based on prescriptive fire-resistance ratings of individual load-bearing elements which are derived from standard fire testing, e.g. ASTM E119. In standard fire testing, a custom-built gas furnace is traditionally used to heat a test specimen by following the gas temperature-time curve prescribed in the ASTM E119 standard. The span length of

Water mist-based fire-extinguishing systems are gaining acceptance for the protection of ship machinery spaces. The use of simulation tools presents a great potential for taking a performance-based design (PBD) approach to these fire scenarios. The Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) is the most frequently used and validated fire modeling software; however, studies of low-pressure water mist fire suppression

Modern architecture is striving for large open spaces, which has resulted in the development of design methodologies such as the Improved Travelling Fires Methodology (iTFM). This methodology is only applicable in large open spaces where flashover may not occur. This paper studies the effect of various design fires, including traditional uniform fires and for the first time iTFM on flat-plate unbonded

The need to understand the risks and implications of traffic incidents involving hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles in tunnels is increasing in importance with higher numbers of these vehicles being deployed. A risk analysis was performed to capture potential scenarios that could occur in the event of a crash and provide a quantitative calculation for the probability of each scenario occurring, with

There has been prior research exploring the exposure of common electrical cords and cables to fire, but that has traditionally been at the lab scale and under near steady-state exposures. The goal of these experiments was to expose six types of cords and cables in a room-scale compartment with a fuel load sufficient to drive the compartment through flashover. The basic test design was to expose the

Engineered wood products (EWPs) are a group of materials having a very similar chemical composition but having different and non-uniform thermo-physical properties throughout their thickness. Such materials present a significant challenge from the pyrolysis modelling point of view. The main focus of the paper is to study and compare the differences between six EWPs—oriented strand board (OSB), plywood

The application of conventional aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) has been severely restricted due to the serious environmental hazard caused by the key component, fluorocarbon surfactants. Environmental-friendly fluorine-free firefighting foams need to be developed urgently. In this study, five silicone surfactants are chosen as key component to prepare fluorine-free firefighting foams. The aqueous

In England, there are no fixed requirements on the parameters adopted when considering residential design fires, and analyses undertaken are often deterministic with limited consideration given to probabilistic assessments and the sensitivity of parameters. The Home Office dwelling fires dataset has been analysed, considering the fire damage area and the time from ignition to fire and rescue service

The increasing use of composite materials in aircraft cabins and structures poses significant challenges in order to maintain and improve the fire safety of aviation. In this work, the flammability characteristics of a commercial glass-fibre reinforced phenolic composite (GFRP) used for aircraft cabin partitions and furnishing are investigated experimentally. Thermogravimetric analysis under inert

Prestressed continuous composite beams (PCCBs) have been widely used in constructions. While the open literature contains notable works that examine the behavior of PCCBs at ambient conditions, the behavior of these members at elevated temperatures has rarely been addressed. As such, this paper focuses on investigating fire resistance of PCCBs by means of advanced numerical simulation. For this purpose

Pedestrian evacuation models are often used to assess life safety in the performance-based design process within fire safety engineering. Within this paper, a summary of data collected via an international online survey regarding the models and users’ experiences and needs is presented. This survey consisted of 22 questions focusing on: the assessment of the pedestrian evacuation model user community;

The tendency of self-ignition of coal is the root cause of underground coal fires (UCFs). A parametric study is carried out on a lab-scale experimental setup developed based on the essential heat and mass transfer characteristics of actual UCFs to understand the factors influencing the inception and evolution of coal fires. Effects of heat accumulation, moisture content and coal layer height are systematically

Structural turnout gear is essential for the safety of firefighters. The station wear, or clothing worn underneath the structural turnout suit, contributes to the thermal protection and performance of the overall ensemble. Depending on the fiber content and material fabrication, base layer garments may increase the risk of potential burn injuries. The purpose of this research was to evaluate National

The sociodemographic inequalities in the ownership of residential fire safety equipment, fire prevention practices and fire protection knowledge was studied using an inductive and data-driven approach based on the responses to a national Swedish survey containing individual-level data on several dimensions of home fire safety practices (n = 7507). Cluster analysis was used to summarise home fire safety

In 1994, three speleologists discovered the Chauvet–Pont d’Arc Cave, which contains singular thermal marks on walls deep in the cavity. These alterations arose from intense fires, and understanding their characteristics would help archaeologists suggest hypotheses about the function of such activities. In this context, three confined fires were conducted in a former underground quarry to reproduce

Backdraft is an explosive fire phenomenon which typically occurs during fire-fighting activities, occasionally leading to fire-fighter fatalities. Real backdraft incidents involve complex fuel gas mixtures consisting of the products of underventilated burning and pyrolysis following burnout. However, most experimental research into backdraft has used methane gas or flammable liquids as fuel. Some aspects

The elimination of halon and frequent fire accidents have caused an urgent need for the development of high-efficient fire extinguishing agents. ABC dry powder has been paid much attention, and has become one of the most extensively used fire extinguishing agents nowadays owing to its wide applications in various fire protection fields. Therefore, to enhance the fire-extinguishing properties of ABC

Self-heating of coal during its storage and transportation has been a serious problem for decades. Coal stored in large piles for long duration is subjected to weathering by atmospheric air that prevails with different temperatures and moisture content. Chemisorption of atmospheric oxygen results in low-temperature oxidation of pile, which generates heat due to exothermic reactions. If the local heat

Roof assemblies are known to be vulnerable to firebrands in urban and wildland-urban interface fires. In the 2016 urban fire in Japan (Itoigawa-City Fire), at least 10 structures were ignited by firebrand showers and three of these structures were ignited by firebrand penetration under roof tiles. In this study, the vulnerabilities of Japanese-style roof tile assemblies to firebrand exposures were

Air curtain is an effective means to stop the propagation of smoke in buildings to provide smoke-free area for safe egress of occupants in case of fires. To understand its effectiveness of smoke confinement in tunnel fires, full-scale tests were conducted in a tunnel of 140 m long and with varying heights of 5.0 m to 5.9 m and varying widths of 5.8 m to 10.8 m. A 20 cm-wide air curtain spanning entire

77% of fatal fires in Spain take place in residential buildings, and more than 60% of deaths are people over 65 years old. The collection of fire loss data in Spain is poorly regulated and it does not have homogeneity. This makes it extremely difficult to study the fire problem and the effectiveness of different safety strategies in general, and more specifically with relation to vulnerable groups

Cotton is the most widely used natural textile fiber for human beings, and fire safety during transportation, storage, and manufacturing is of great significance. This work investigated the smoldering burning of a high-density cotton bale (36 L and 225 kg/m3) tightened by thin steel wire ropes under the concurrent wind. Without wind, the creeping smoldering spread showed two stages: (I) the relatively

Abstract In hospitals, the evacuation of those with severe movement impairments can be highly problematic for the patients, for the staff and for other evacuees. It is critical to understand the performance of horizontal and vertical evacuation procedures, including the means by which people with reduced mobility can be assisted during stair descent. Microsimulation modelling provides a useful tool

Abstract Characterizing propagation of a thermal runaway hazard in cell arrays and modules is critical to understanding fire hazards in energy storage systems. In this paper, the thermal runaway propagation of a pouch cell array has been examined by developing a 1D finite difference model. The results are compared with experimental data. First, the thermal runaway reactions found in the literature

The original version of this article unfortunately contained an error in the Acknowledgement section.

Abstract Smoke propagation into a corridor configuration is an important issue in fire safety engineering. One important characteristic is the smoke behaviour in the steady state, namely, the smoke layer thickness, its mean temperature and its mean velocity. The question that is investigated here is how these quantities vary as a function of the corridor geometrical characteristics and of the fire

Abstract High-rise buildings are usually in a windy environment. The motion of fire-induced smoke and fire behaviors may be strongly affected by the external wind forces except by the stack effect. It turns out that wind with different directions and velocities can cause disparity in fire dynamics. Since most previous researches only focused on the cross wind conditions, this work investigated the

Abstract Municipal firefighters count on their protective garments to avoid skin burns caused by thermal and flame exposures. Typical firefighting garment consists of three layers of different fire-resistant fabrics named as outer shell, moisture barrier and thermal liner. This paper employed a numerical heat transfer model for firefighters’ garments, which paid more attention to modeling air gaps

Abstract Cable-supported structures such as bridges and stadia are critical for the surrounding community and the consequences arising from a major fire event can be substantial. Previous computational studies into the thermal response of cables often employed simplistic heat transfer models that assumed lump capacitance or cross-sectional homogeneity without proof of validity. This paper proposes

Abstract In this paper, the author presents a novel information extraction system that analyses fire service reports. Although the reports contain valuable information concerning fire and rescue incidents, the narrative information in these reports has received little attention as a source of data. This is because of the challenges associated with processing these data and making sense of the contents

Abstract The widespread use of subway system provides convenience for the fast transportation in the cities, but the subway fire accident has the risk of causing serious consequence. Therefore, it is important and helpful to do research on the characteristics of fire plume in subway carriage to recognize and control subway fires. The experiments were carried out in a 1/5th scale model subway carriage

Abstract On January 19, 2017 an accidental fire, which started by an electric shorting, resulted in the complete collapse of the 16-storey Plasco Building in Tehran. Twenty-two people including sixteen firefighters were killed in that incident. This paper reports the study carried out to investigate the most likely causes of the events and collapse of the structure. The information presented in this

Abstract While fire-related injuries and deaths decreased in the global north over the past few years, they have increased in the global south. With more than one billion people residing in informal settlements (sometimes known as slums, ghettos or shantytowns), it is necessary that greater effort be placed on addressing and developing means for improving fire safety in these areas. As a result of

Abstract An increased environmental conscientiousness in society and the abundance of timber in Canada has inevitably led to the desire for more timber construction. In order to increase the opportunity for timber products in construction, novel building systems such as post-tensioned (PT) timber have been developed. Limited development on numerical modelling has been done on PT timber systems for

Abstract Fire is one of the most dangerous natural/manmade disasters that endangers human life and property. Although early fire smoke detection systems have become increasingly widespread, it is particularly important to study videos of these systems to better understand the effectiveness of fire smoke detection, primarily because this will help to reduce losses from fires. Some of these systems have

Abstract Simulated smoke has been widely used in place of actual fire smoke during flight tests in the certification process for aircraft cargo compartment smoke detection systems. Previous research has identified several differences between actual and simulated smoke. However, few studies have determined the quantitative effects of these differences on the transport and detection properties of actual

Abstract Codes and standards for lightning often rely on simulations due to the difficult nature of lightning testing, as in the case of corrugated stainless steel tubing (CSST). A small set of simulations by CSST manufacturers were previously used to justify the suggestion that grounding CSST would make it safe from perforation in the presence of lightning. Such a small set of simulations does not

Abstract This paper presents the development of a thin filament pyrometry method to characterize the time-varying temperature field in a medium-scale pool fire burning in a quiescent environment. A digital camera with optical filters and zoom lens was used to record the high temperature emission intensity of 14 µm diameter, silicon-carbide filaments oriented horizontally at various heights above the

Abstract The ability of the fire service to save lives in building fires has a profound impact on planning. However, very little empirical data are available on how different factors affect this capability—or even how many that are rescued annually. The current paper aims to partly fill this gap with an assessment of all rescues performed by the fire departments in Sweden during 2017. A combination

Abstract In wildland and other flame spread scenarios a spreading fire front often forms an elliptical shape, incorporating both forward and lateral spread. While lateral flame spread is much slower than forward rates of spread, it still contributes to the growth of the overall fire front. In this work, a small-scale experiment is performed to investigate the mechanisms causing this lateral spread

Research into workplace injuries traditionally focuses upon discrete injury events, such as falls, violence, contact with machinery and other traumatic events. By comparison, research literature on work-related injury events involving fire is sparse, despite the fact that fires can produce particularly severe injuries and involve multiple victims. Comparatively little is consequently known about the