Episodes
Dec. 7, 2022
079 - Timber columns failure in the decay phase with Thomas Gernay and Jochen Zehfuss
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 …
Dec. 5, 2022
QA#1 - November 2022
Welcome to Questions & Answers session 01 covering the topics brought up in November 2022. In this session you can find answers to the following questions: Fire resistance of joints asked by Millie Wan (answered by Piotr Tur…
Nov. 30, 2022
078 - Experiments that Changed Fire Science pt. 2 - BRE Cardington with Tom Lennon
If Dalmarnock was the reality check for fire modelling, we could call the work carried by BRE at Cardington the birthplace of Structural Fire Engineering. Welcome to episode 2 of Experiments that Changed Fire Science! In th…
Nov. 23, 2022
077 - Informal settlements - we need solutions not gadgets, Richard Walls
Delivery of fire safety to one billion inhabitants of informal settlements cannot be done through a single solution. No magical extinguishing ball nor hyper-sensitive sensor can solve this issue. As it is not a single issue …
Nov. 16, 2022
076 - Experiments that changed fire science pt. 1 - Dalmarnock Fire Tests Round Robin study with Guillermo Rein and Wolfram Jahn
Welcome to a mini-series of episodes on experiments that changed fire science. In the first episode, we cover the a prioiri and posteriori modelling task within the Dalmarnock Fire Experiments programme carried out by the BR…
Nov. 9, 2022
075 - Spacecraft fire safety with David Urban
Dear Terrestial Fire Engineers, let me take you on a journey that will make you experience fire engineering like nothing on our planet. Because in fact, it is the fire engineering of spacecraft for their operations in a zero…
Nov. 2, 2022
074 - Engineering not magic, intumescent coatings with Andrea Lucherini
Intumescent coatings are not magic. They are a product of amazing engineering, a theatre of thermophysical properties that create an insulative layer that sometimes is the only thing holding fire from destroying a structure.…
Oct. 26, 2022
073 - Smoke control in shopping malls - uncommon aspects that make or break the system
Long before I started the podcast, my bread and butter was to find clever ways to remove smoke from shopping malls. Actually, I like to believe I was pretty good at the job, given the fact some of the biggest projects in Eas…
Oct. 19, 2022
072 - Extracting the secret of IMFSE from Bart Merci and Eulalia Planas
Many creators will not agree, but in some cases, copying is the highest form of admiration. And there are things in Fire Safety Engineering that are more than worthy of being copied. One of them is the famous International M…
Oct. 12, 2022
071 - Risk as a tool for thinking with Ruben van Coile
When thinking about 'risk' do you view it as a tool? I usually thought about it as a concept or maybe as a measure of 'how safe my building is?', but I have not really appreciated how beneficial it might be when used in such…
Oct. 5, 2022
070 - Fire resistance is whatever you want it to be with Piotr Turkowski
Today we talk fire resistance, but unlike you have ever heard. Join me and Dr Piotr Turkowski - two fire laboratory professionals in an honest discussion about their craft. The challenges in standardization and committee wor…
Sept. 28, 2022
069 - Challenging fires at the wildland-urban interface (WUI) with Michael Gollner
Why so many researchers are spending their time tackling fire issues at the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI)? What is so challenging about this? We always lived near nature, why today this emerges as one of the 'hottest' topic…
Sept. 21, 2022
068 - Human walking speed and factors that influence it with John Gales
What factors influence the walking speed of an occupant? Is it just their physiology and crowd density? It seems it is more complicated than that (as most things are in fire science...). Dr John Gales of York University take…
Sept. 14, 2022
067 - Next-gen smoke control experimental facility and a digital twin with Grzegorz Krajewski
We've felt a bit awkward about how FSE handles smoke control in corridors. If you look closely into common practices, they rarely do include impressive engineering - more often you see some 'tips and tricks' that make the CF…
Sept. 7, 2022
066 - Fire Safe Use of Wood in Buildings with Andy Buchanan
I wonder if we will be ever able to say: we know exactly how to build fire-safe buildings with mass timber. However that day may never come, each day of research brings us a little bit closer to achieving this goal. And som…
Aug. 31, 2022
065 - Understanding mesh sensitivity and model uncertainties with Jason Floyd
Will a higher resolution mesh make my CFD more accurate? That is a harmless question, and most of us would tend toward 'I guess yeah'. But let us try and unpack this. Into atoms! What does higher resolution mean? How exactly…
Aug. 24, 2022
064 - Heat stress in fires - from inside and outside with Denise Smith and Gavin Horn
This amount of heat flux for this amount of time, routine conditions, check, done. This is how I used to do my engineering and tenability assessment related to heat stress... up till today when prof Denisse Smith and prof Ga…
Aug. 17, 2022
063 - Why do we need a handbook of fire and the environment with Brian Meacham and Margaret McNamee
Do we need another fire handbook? If so, what handbook would that be? I guess a question like this must have gone through Brian Meachams' mind when he got the idea for a handbook of fire and environment. And he got a brillia…
Aug. 10, 2022
062 - BIM (not only for fire) with Peter Thompson and Rino Lovreglio
It does not matter if you hate or love BIM, does not matter if you use it daily or have no idea what it is... Building Information Modelling will be an important part of our engineering future and we better get used to it. …
Aug. 2, 2022
061 - Glazing in fire with Yu Wang
The relation between ventilation conditions and fire severity is quite a fundamental one. You don't even have to be a fire safety engineer to realize that more air means a bigger fire. But how does air get into the compartme…
July 27, 2022
060 - How PV panels change the fire behaviour of roofs with Jens Kristensen
[March 2023 update] The Thesis PDF is finally available! Check it here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369141515_Fire_risk_associated_with_photovoltaic_installations_on_flat_roof_constructions_-_Experimental_analys…
July 20, 2022
059 - Residential fire safety with Dan Madrzykowski and Charlie Fleischmann
How much the fire scene at households has changed over the last 30 years? Why modern furniture burns worse than one made with wood, cotton and other natural materials? And what does that mean to firefighting? What challenges…
July 13, 2022
058 - Animal pyrocognition - a path to undestand our beginnings with fire with Ivo Jacobs
Have you wondered how fire science started? But I mean the real real start... not 1666 one, nor the one when we've started to build furnaces... The start when the first evolutionary ancestor of homo sapiens figured out this …
July 6, 2022
057 - Structural fire engineering with Thomas Gernay
The subject of structural fire engineering was long overdue in the podcast schedule. But once I finally got it on my agenda, I made sure to interview one of the very best there are - prof Thomas Gernay of John Hopkins Unive…