SFPE Engineering Technology Conference

It's been a great and interesting day at the SFPE Annual Meeting. The Engineering Technology Conference is going on the first two days. There has been numerous good presentations, award ceremonies and reports from the SFPE organization.

I'm proud of the several prizes that Sweden received (see SFPE Sweden homepage, in Swedish: http://www.sfpe-biv.se/nyheter/nyhetsarkiv/10089-prisregn-oever-svenskar-i-usa). Most notably, I must say, is the price to Robert Jonsson for his great effort in mentoring and inspiring at the fire safety engineering programme in Lund. More than 700 students have graduated and Robert is the key person to the successes of the Lund program. A big congratulation to him!

Great presentation were made by Nina Hansen, Denmark, on fire risk assessments in tall residential buildings. I'm sure this may be interesting for the SFPE Sweden's group that currently are looking at fire safety verification of buildings were pre-accepted solutions are not valid, including buildings with more than 16 stories.

My colleague, prof Ulf Wickström, is holding his presentation of a new formula
for calculating time to ignition of solids.

My colleague professor Ulf Wickström presented a simplified formula for calculating time for ignition of solids. Validation with numerical methods show great accuracy and big improvements compared to previous methods.

Kristofer Overholt from Texas University presented a really interesting study on fire penetration into void spaces. Experiments and analytical models were compared. Also, the effect of natural vs PPV ventilation were studied. Fires into the construction is very relevant in Sweden nowadays. We have a good understanding of predicting and analyzing room fires, and the fire brigade are using great tactics. But when it comes to fires in the structures we need more knowledge and new methods. With growing fire damage costs, this is definitely an area where more research is needed.

One interesting conclusion is that the use of PPV may effect the fire behavior and increase the risk of a smoldering fire to a flaming fire. Kudos to Kris at University of Texas, Austin, for great work in the area.