Fire Science Show

Performance-based engineering or the use of probabilistic methods in building design are not inventions of Fire Safety Engineering. But we sometimes tend to act like we need to 'discover' and work out everything on our own. I strongly believe this is not the best way forward. And certainly not the cheapest one.....

Would you rather do 20 published experiments and take your impact factors, or make one that truly changed the world of fire science? Or maybe a different way, would you pursue something that is quick, easy and gives immediate credit over something hard, stressful and requiring maybe years to really change mainstream engineering?

Sure, we all like to see ourselves as heroes, but in reality, very few of us have the courage and vision to pursue these hard-to-achieve goals...

Three months ago I saw a video of some sort of an electric scooter going off in someone's residential building. That person had absolutely no chance of controlling that fire. I guess they have escaped, but it must have been severe fire damage to their home. Then, I listened to an excellent webinar by IFAB (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vir4_1qSSc) where for the first time I've seen useful measurements of HRR in such a fire... and they are horrifying...

Welcome to Questions & Answers session 02 covering the recent sponsorship opening in the podcast and how the podcast is turning from a hobby project to something more professional, and the summary of the 2022 listener experience survey.

In this session you can find answers to the following questions:

What does it mean to have podcast sponsorships for the podcast, the audience, me and the sponsors? 2:15
Summary of listener experience survey...

In my first episode, I mentioned that I'm doing this podcast to preserve some amazing conversations and share them with a larger audience, as sometimes it is a huge waste of interesting thoughts that remain just between the few people participating in a talk. This part of the podcast mission is what I'm trying to achieve with today's episode...

Let's start another mini-series! This time 'fire fundamentals' where we are going to learn some basics from the world's best. It is usually fascinating to do that! Not sure how you feel about it but I would kill for a chance to listen to the principles of fire science from Quintiere or Drysdale, even though I give these lectures on my own.....

Fire science is often accelerated by tragedies. The same goes for the tools we are using and the methods we know. In the early 2000's we already had some great tools, in fact, it was the era where the paradigm of fire modelling shifted from zone models to emerging CFD (listen to episode 81 to learn more about this shift). But these new capabilities soon went through a significant test - a terrorist attack in New York, bringing two iconic skyscrapers to collapse...

Has it ever crossed your mind how would our discipline look like, if we did not have Fire Dynamics Simulator? Maybe you had an opportunity to discuss CFD with colleagues from other disciplines, to find their faces in shock and awe that the fire community actually has its own, FREE AND OPEN SOURCE, validated and fully recognized solver? A testimony to the impact of FDS may be the citation count on its user guide, which has recently exceeded 5...

Today is a great day to celebrate with Prof Ruben van Coile of Ghent University, who is most likely the first representative of Fire Safety Engineering to receive a grant within the European Research Councill Starting Grant scheme.  It is not common to celebrate a grant award this much - usually, we would wait till the work gets done and we see the effects... But not here.  ERC is something else. ERC is a place for the bravest proposals brought by the brightest minds of science...

When the flaming combustion stops and the raging inferno disappears, the environment is still far away from a stable, stationary state. The heat emitted by the fire and accumulated by the structural elements is still on the move, travelling through the members until it gets eventually dissipated. As parts of the structure get heated, some processes will occur, that may influence their load-bearing capacity and other properties...