Fire Science Show

Imagine if we had a tool that we could use to design a design fire. Instead of simply assuming fire growth characteristics by slapping the alpha-t2 function, use a tool that could tell us which items in a compartment burn and what the characteristics of that fire are. I would say this dream is shared among many fire safety engineers - I think we can all agree that we could use such a tool.

Today's guest, Dr Greg Baker, has shared this dream and built a tool like this within his PhD at the University of Canterbury. The skeleton was a zone model, and the tool developed has played with it well.  Actually, feel free to try it out in here.

In the episode, we talk about how Greg built up this tool and how it decides on the growth, plateau and decay of the fire. We also discuss how such a tool may be critical in a probabilistic approach to fire safety engineering and general performance-based design. Who knows, perhaps in the near future, such an approach will also help us run our CFDs. 

If you enjoyed this, you perhaps would like to read more:

• Benchmarking the Single Item Ignition Prediction Capability of B-RISK Using Furniture Calorimeter and Room-Size Experiments
• Ignition of secondary objects in a design fire simulation
• Developing probabilistic design fires for performance-based fire safety engineering

And a bonus:

• Ranking the Level of Openness in Blind Compartment Fire Modelling Studies

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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.