The automation of fire detection systems can reduce the loss of life and property by allowing a fast and accurate response to fire accidents. Although visual techniques have some advantages over sensor-based methods, conventional image processing-based methods frequently cause false alarms. Recent studies on convolutional neural networks have overcome these limitations and exhibited an outstanding

The interest in probabilistic methodologies to demonstrate structural fire safety has increased significantly in recent times. However, the evaluation of the structural behavior under fire loading is computationally expensive even for simple structural models. In this regard, machine learning-based surrogate modeling provides an appealing way forward. Surrogate models trained to simulate the behavior

The effect of creep on the strength capacities, ductility, and failure modes of shear-bolted lap joints at elevated temperatures is investigated. Thirteen bolted lap joints (representing shear tab connections) are tested under different loading rates: fast rate (10 mm/min) and slow rates (1 mm/min and 0.3 mm/min) for temperatures ranging from 450°C to 700°C. The temperature- and the time-dependent

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is widely used to simulate tunnels and partially substitute on-site tests. As technology advances, new application opportunities appear; some examples are the optimal operation of ventilation and emergency systems, risk assessment of tunnels and training of the operators. Even when the computational capacity of computers has grown, CFD is still constrained by the

The orthotropic and temperature-dependent nature of the mechanical properties of wood is well recognized. However, past studies of mechanical properties at elevated temperatures are either limited to temperatures below 200 °C or focus only on the direction parallel to grain. The effect of time-dependent pyrolysis during measurement is often neglected. This paper presents a novel method for determining

The risk of fatal residential fires is known to be differentiated by sociodemographic factors. However, often prevention measures are introduced generally in a population, thereby perhaps affecting the effectiveness of these interventions. By using a 20-year high-quality register over fatal fires in Sweden and a previously validated Boolean expressions regarding the effectiveness for specific interventions

Post-wildfire investigations of structures provide engineers with data to understand how to harden building infrastructure for future wildfire hazards. This paper presents a preliminary framework where field-collected LiDAR and drone data is integrated with numerical models for post-wildfire assessment of buildings with the goal of learning from wildfire-damaged buildings. The developed framework provides

Modelling capabilities have drastically improved in the last decade. However, in most of the cases the fire response of building elements is predicted by fitting input material properties to the models in order to match test data. This paper presents models developed to predict the unexposed side temperature of stone wool layered composites with stainless steel or gypsum claddings exposed to severe

The flammability limits of flat materials with different moderate thickness in opposed flow were investigated to clarify the effect of sample thickness on flammability limit. Thin poly-methyl methacrylate (PMMA) sheets and polycarbonate (PC) sheets were used as samples. The thickness was varied as 0.2 mm, 0.5 mm and 1.0 mm for PMMA, and 0.1 mm, 0.2 mm, 0.5 mm and 1.0 mm for PC. The limiting oxygen

Over the past few years, numerous large-scale disasters have occurred due to wildfires at the wildland-urban interface (WUI). In these fires, spread via the transport of firebrands (burning embers) plays a significant role. Several models have been developed to describe the transport of firebrands but few, if any, are available which can provide a quantitative means to generate firebrands at the source

A series of fire experiments were conducted in an ISO 9705 room in an attempt to reconstruct a multi-item room fire produced by individual items. Fuel items represented typical shapes and sizes of furniture in a bedroom including a double bed, bedside tables, wardrobe, dressing table and chair. As all of the fuel items were made of seasoned pine timber, these are termed as “mock furniture”. Double

In modelling human behavior during a fire, one has to deal with uncertainties regarding the psychological response due to limited or incomplete knowledge database. The purpose of this paper is to develop a new fuzzy Bayesian Network framework to model causal relationship of psychological response at the initial stage of fire events. Firstly, a new conceptual model namely the PRiF (Psychological Response

Tower-mounted camera-based wildfire detection systems provide an effective means of early forest fire detection. Historically, tower sites have been identified by foresters and locals with intimate knowledge of the terrain and without the aid of computational optimisation tools. When moving into vast new territories and without the aid of local knowledge, this process becomes cumbersome and daunting

Previous building fires and research has shown that simple (shear) connections develop large axial force and flexural demands during a fire leading to potential failure of the connections and progressive collapse of a building. These findings have motivated decades of international research on the fire behavior of simple (shear) connections. While this research all confirmed that simple connections

A simple framework for setting risk tolerability limits is proposed following a literature review of risk acceptance in fire safety engineering and a feedback round with international fire safety professionals. The framework provides practical guidance for the application of international fire safety guidance, such as the recently published UK guidance document on probabilistic risk assessment for

The objective of this study is to investigate how the location of fire source impacts the species generation. From the standpoint of fire safety, toxicity need to be estimated from the product gases evolved under different conditions of pool fire inside the compartment. However, industries like chemical, nuclear and thermal power plants also possess fuel positions significantly above the floor level

Multiple fires of unequal heat release rate (HRR) is a common fire scenario in real fire accidents. Differing from most previous research assumption of identical fire sources, the unequal HRR for those fire sources is regarded as more reasonable in reality. To explore the asymmetric flow characteristics surrounding multiple fires under such circumstances, simulations of two square propane burners with

Vehicle fires in parking structures developing into large conflagrations are rare but can result in severe economic losses. It is important to understand the hazard posed by modern vehicle fires to determine whether current fire codes for parking garages are mandating adequate fire protection requirements. There has been an increase in the fire hazard from changes in vehicle design and increased use

This study examined individual ascent and descent performance on long straight stairs. A field experiment was conducted in a subway station in China involving 30 healthy volunteers with mean (SD) age of 38.6 (16.1). Each participant was required to ascend 71.4 m height straight stairs consisted of 6 stair sections, then required to descend the same stairs after an enough rest period. During the rest

Every year, high numbers of firefighters are injured at fire incidents. A primary cause of moderate to severe injury can be linked to the protective garments worn by firefighters and understanding the limits of these protective garments is crucial for their safety. It would be substantially advantageous to firefighter safety if their available safe escape time is included in building design. To do

The application of conventional aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) has been restricted due to the environmental hazards caused by long-chain fluorocarbon surfactants. Environmentally friendly firefighting foams are urgently needed. In this study, AFFFs based on a long-chain fluorocarbon surfactant and a short-chain fluorocarbon surfactant, and fluorine-free foams based on a silicone surfactant and a

The extinguishing properties of aqueous suspensions with carbon nanoparticles (astralenes) used for extinguishment of liquid hydrocarbon flames were investigated. The extinguishment time (τ) was found to decrease by 75–80% with increasing of astralene concentrations (φ) from 0 vol.% to 0.5 vol.%. As the concentration is further increased above 1.0 vol.%, the value of τ also increases. Such changes

Cooking equipment is involved in nearly half of home fires in the United States, with cooktop fires the leading cause of deaths and injuries in cooking-related fires. In this study, we evaluate 16 electrochemical, optical, temperature and humidity sensors, placed in the cooktop exhaust duct, for use in predicting and preventing cooktop ignition. The sensors were evaluated in a series of 60 experiments

High-accuracy and real-time smoke spread models are vitally important for firefighting in subway tunnels. This paper proposes a data-driven model, named CAERES-DNN, for predicting smoke spread in subway tunnel fire. CAERES-DNN constitutes of CAERES (convolutional autoencoder with residual blocks) architecture and DNN (deep neural network) architecture. CAERES has 26 convolutional layers, 4 full link

This paper is to quantify the external wind effects on flame behavior evolutions inside and outside a compartment with opposing openings. Temperature profiles at the windward and leeward corners inside the compartment as well as the external flame trajectories were investigated. Experimental results show that the flame shape inside the compartment changes from the windward symmetrical rotation flame

In a healthcare context, the success of a fire safety procedure in a real-life emergency mainly depends on staff decisions and actions. One of the factors influencing staff decision-making is their training. In most healthcare facilities, safety educators use slide-based lectures as a training tool. Virtual Reality (VR) is gaining fire safety community attention for being an interesting training tool

The present work analyses theoretically and numerically fire plumes evolving in a two-layer stratified environment. The ambient fluid consists of a lower cold (heavy) layer and an upper warm (light) layer with a sharp interface. The fire plume is controlled by the fire heat release rate Q. Depending on the density interface location, the temperatures of the layers and on the fire source conditions

This paper is proposing an machine learning based expert system for preliminary prediction of the insulation fire resisting performance of shallow floor systems when subject to exposure to the ISO 834 Standard Fire Curve. The proposed system is a digital tool which incorporates a machine learning algorithm trained on the outcomes of pre-run two-dimensional finite element heat transfer analyses of shallow

The original publication of the article unfortunately contained a mistake in Figure 2c.

A qualitative assessment of fire hazard posed by laminated glass balcony balustrades was carried out through an in-depth analysis of empirical evidence from six (6) past balcony fires with glass balustrades to deduce the type of glass used and understand the mechanism for fire spread in these fire scenarios. Post-fire conditions of these balconies were studied based on their post-breakage integrity

The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the validity of the existing methods for analytically solving the governing equation of smoke filling in enclosures with floor leaks and growing fires. Since the complete form of the governing equation is inseparable, it can hardly be exactly solved analytically. Up to now, there are mainly five analytical solutions available in the literature. The first

This paper proposes novel modifications to existing solid flame and point source models to better predict the spatial contour of near-field, steady-state radiant heat flux from large circular pool fires (with diameters ranging from 1 m to 20 m) with gasoline and diesel fuel. The proposed models account for partial smoke obscuration of the flames, and the emissive power of the visible flame layer is

In the original publication of the article, Table 1, 2, 3 was incorrectly published.

Using high strength concrete, instead of the conventional one, has been increasingly growing in popularity over recent years. However, the safety concerns associated with their fire performance, resulting from higher density, can call its advantages into question. As opposed to data circumscribed on compressive and tensile strength, rare are studies that have been focused on other aspects of high strength

When using solid fuels for live fire training, NFPA 1403: Standard on Live Fire Training Evolutions requires that the materials be wood based. While the standard offers guidance on the type of fuels that are permissible for use in training, it offers little in the way of quantitative methods of selecting an appropriately sized fuel package. In order to examine the effects of fuel mass and orientation

The motion of firefighters during putting fires out significantly affects the protective performance of their suits. Due to firefighter’s motion, the suit moves periodically relative to the body causing a periodic variation in heat release form the suit to the body and a periodic cooling of the microclimate between the suit and the body. This paper investigated the variation in the protective performance

In this paper, we examine fire prevention planning in terms of analysis of population trends with regard to the area covered by Merseyside fire and rescue service in the North West of England. In particular, we present an examination of the potential impact of changing population characteristics previously identified as being associated with fire risk such as old age, living alone, behaviours and lifestyles

In recent years, the development of fire detectors has attracted the attention of researchers for the purpose of protecting human lives and properties from catastrophic fire disasters. However, monitoring fires is challenging due to several unique characteristics of fire sensor signals, such as the existence of temporal dependency and diverse signal patterns for different fire types, including flaming

Smoke removal has been a challenging problem which refers to the process of retrieving clear images from the smoky ones. It has an extensive demand while the performances of existing image desmoking methods have limitations owing to the homogeneous medium based model, hand-crafted features, and insufficient datasets. Unlike the existing desmoking methods using an atmospheric scattering model, the proposed

Characterising the risk of the fire spread in informal settlements relies on the ability to understand compartment fires with boundary conditions that are significantly different to normal residential compartments. Informal settlement dwellings frequently have thermally thin and leaky boundaries. Due to the unique design of these compartments, detailed experimental studies were conducted to understand

Fire forensic investigators are challenged to determine in what scenarios can lithium ion batteries initiate a fire, and what post-fire signatures exist to determine if the battery was more likely the cause of the fire or a victim of the fire. Towards this goal, this study experimentally characterizes the ignition characteristics of cylindrical format 18650 cells and the post-failure properties of

Fire investigators are trained to apply the scientific method to determine the origin and cause of a fire. They look for patterns that indicate the sequence of involvement of available fuel loads, including considering whether a given fuel load contains enough energy to ignite other fuels. It is common knowledge that cylindrical 18650 lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery cells contain significant electrochemical

Most of the previous studies on restrained steel beam behaviour in fire conditions have neglected the creep effect due to the lack of applicable creep models. A finite element model (FEM) is determined in this study to investigate fire resistance and the behaviour of restrained high-strength (RHS) Q690 steel beams in fire considering the high-temperature Fields & Fields creep model. A comparison of

Molten marks identified at a fire site can aid in determining the cause of a fire. Quantitative analysis of such molten marks has not yet been reported, despite several identification methods for molten marks being proposed based on optical micrographs. Herein, we propose a new methodology to establish the quantitative microstructure parameters of the molten marks using electron backscatter diffraction

In this paper, we proposed a semantic fire image segmentation method using a convolutional neural network. The simple but powerful method proposed is middle skip connection achieved through the residual network, which is widely used in image-based deep learning. To enhance the middle skip connection, we constructed a pair of convolution layers, hereafter referred to as input convolution and output

Scaling laws based on the conservation of the Froude number have been widely used in both fire research and fire engineering design in tunnels. However, the applicability of scaling laws in tunnel fires with natural ventilation has not been systematically verified. In order to verify the scaling laws for tunnel fires with natural ventilation, two model tunnels were tested: Tunnel-L, measuring 20 m

Fire protection measures are taken to prevent fires or to keep the resulting damage as low as possible. The statistical effectiveness of fire protection measures can be derived from a large number of fires that have already occurred. With the research paper presented here, such proof of effectiveness is rendered for certain specific fire protection measures, such as installed fire detection and fire

Smoke, as a prominent character of combustion, is widely regarded as a signal of forest fire. Existing in a video-based smoke root detection methods on rely the distance between smoke and the lens, which is one of the most challenging parts. In relatively close distances, the dynamic region extraction method not only presents simplicity but also provides clear outlines and shapes, which is good for

Approximately one billion people across the globe are living in informal settlements with a large potential fire risk. Due to the high dwelling density, a single informal settlement dwelling fire may result in a very serious fire disaster leaving thousands of people homeless. In this work, a simple physics-based theoretical model was employed to assess the critical fire separation distance between

An ultimate goal of placing fire detection systems in buildings and structures is to allow for the rapid detection of fire and accurate faster than real time prediction of ensuing fire behavior so that relevant information can be delivered to the appropriate stakeholders. In the near-term, development of detection systems with decreased detection time, better discrimination against nuisance and false

Passenger safety is one of the main goals of railway tunnels design, being the evacuation of a burning train one of the worst scenarios, where any delay to start the evacuation is crucial for passenger’s survival. Previous research works have separately studied the evacuation of railway tunnels due to fires and the effect of tunnel slope on gas and smoke spread, but none of them has addressed both

Ageing populations are generating new challenges for the safe design of buildings and infrastructure systems in communities around the world. Elderly building occupants are more likely to have mobility impairments, and in turn, require longer times and increased assistance to evacuate buildings compared with able-bodied adults. To date, only a few studies have been carried out to assess the evacuation

This paper sets out to answer two questions. What effect does installing smoke alarms have on reported fires and casualties for the “average” household? How much of an effect would increasing smoke alarm utilization have on the total number of fires and casualties in the United States? The installation of smoke alarms in homes without them will reduce the expected number of fires reported from a (formerly)

This paper is a re-examination to quantify the flame tilt angle of fires induced by stack effect from a heat and mass transfer perspective. In previous studies, the critical transition and length of the deflection flame were formulated. In the current study, with different kinds of fuels, the flame tilt angles under different strength of stack effect are compared. Results show that under stack effect

Fire is a chaotic and extreme phenomenon. While the past few years have witnessed the success of integrating machine intelligence (MI) to tackle equally complex problems in parallel fields, we continue to shy away from leveraging MI to study fire behavior or to evaluate fire performance of materials and structures. In order to advocate for the use of MI, this review showcases the merit of adopting

A wireless sensor network was created to measure water-flow rate in a fire hose. An integrated electronic piezoelectric accelerometer was chosen as the sensor to measure the flow rate based on the vibrations generated by water flowing through a fire hose close to the hose nozzle. These sensors are small, lightweight, and they can attach to the outside of the hose, not obstructing the water’s flow path

Understanding the fire behaviour in buildings is fundamental and crucial to the practice of structural fire safety design. Traditionally, time-temperature curves associated with a burning rate developed from the “compartment fire framework” are most widely used by structural engineers and applied as a load to the structure. However, the adequacy of homogenous temperature distribution in fully developed