Fire Science Show is connecting fire researchers and practitioners with a society of fire engineers, firefighters, architects, designers and all others, who are genuinely interested in creating a fire-safe future. Through interviews with a diverse group of experts, we present the history of our field as well as the most novel advancements. We hope the Fire Science Show becomes your weekly source of fire science knowledge and entertainment. Produced in partnership with the Diamond Sponsor of the show - OFR Consultants
https://www.firescienceshow.com/
129 - Backdraught and Underventilated Fires with Dr. Ricky Carvel
In today's episode, we go into the practical consequences of having an underventilated fire - that is the possibility of backdraught or other similar smoke explosion phenomena. My guest Dr Ricky Carvel from the University of Edinburgh, touches on the chemistry of combustion, explaining why the underventilated fire is different than the oxygen-rich one, and how flammability limits are critical in understanding dynamic phenomena that may occur in a fuel-rich environment. We go into conditions in which backdraughts occur, and how establishing flow-path or reducing smoke layer temperatures may be a way to mitigate the risk. Finally, Ricky shares on some future plans on how to give firefighters a real tool to assess the risk of backdraught.
And of course, we had a ton of fun with the movie Backdraft, and to some extent the American spelling of the word.
Some additional resources:
- Polish firefighters and door implosion video (around the 8th minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztrmC8o2UhU
- The videos we created for firefighters can be found here: https://fire.eng.ed.ac.uk/techtalks
- Our short backdraught video from YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kRoKckpJmE - The Slo-Mo Guys backdraft (sic) video:
https://youtu.be/ZyCCWuO0mQo?si=NHKkG82clnPOTPbV - Two of our papers on backdraught/backdraft (FT uses American spellings!):
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2017.04.003
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-019-00914-9
----
The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.