Current Activities

  • Research Projects
    • Firebrand Ignition of Building Materials, a UL/FSRI-funded collaborative project between Stanislav Stoliarov (University of Maryland), Peter Sunderland (University of Maryland), Alexander Filkov (University of Melbourne), and Michael Gollner (University of California, Berkeley).
      • Lead principal investigator and point of contact: Stanislav Stoliarov
      • Abstract: Firebrands are widely recognized as a key process in the propagation of wildland fires. This project is elucidating the ignition of building materials by firebrands; relating the ignition propensity to fundamental material properties; and characterizing the associated thermal and gaseous environments for various firebrand loadings, wind speeds, external radiative heat fluxes, and exposure times. These processes will be incorporated into new computational models founded upon detailed pyrolysis kinetics. Two structural building materials are considered: pressure-treated wood and Trex composite material. These are tested in a bench-scale wind tunnel and subjected to piles of smoldering wood dowels. The heat release rates are measured with gas analyzers and the smolder temperatures and heat flux distributions are measured with advanced visible and infrared pyrometry. Detailed pyrolysis models are being created using the results of thermogravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, microscale combustion calorimetry and the Controlled Atmosphere Pyrolysis Apparatus II. Large-scale tests are being performed on the same materials to evaluate the effects of scale. These tests are performed with and without additional radiant heat flux to replicate an impact of adjacent fire front.
    • Numerical Modeling of Compartment Effects in Benchmark Compartment Fire Configurations, a UL/FSRI-funded collaborative project between Arnaud Trouvé (University of Maryland), Bart Merci (Ghent University) and Tuan Ngo (University of Melbourne).
      • Lead principal investigator and point of contact: Arnaud Trouvé
      • Abstract: The general objective of this research project is to evaluate the performance of current fire modeling capabilities in the simulation of compartment fires with a particular focus on the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Specific objectives are to identify best modeling options in the baseline version of FDS to simulate radiation heat transfer, flame extinction, soot production, and fuel production due to pyrolysis taking place inside solid flammable objects. Specific objectives are also to identify best practices for FDS practitioners in terms of spatial resolution in the gas phase solver and angular resolution in the radiation solver. Finally, specific objectives include an evaluation of state-of-the-art modeling concepts for the description of gas radiation, soot production and soot radiation, and wall functions proposed to estimate the convective heat flux at burning surfaces; these will be evaluated in modified versions of FDS. The computational work will use validation data obtained from a series of experiments recently performed by UL in a simple canonical compartment fire configuration equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation.
  • IFSC Webinar Series on Wildland Fires
    • On May 18, 2023, the IFSC released a free, open access, video webinar series on wildland fires. The webinar series is a community-level international effort that brings together a diverse group of leading experts volunteering their time to act as speakers. The series reviews current knowledge on wildland fires and wildland urban interface (WUI) fires, adopting an engineering perspective while also providing an introduction to relevant concepts in fire ecology, weather dynamics and atmospheric science, and geographical sciences. The video material is released under a Creative Commons license BY-NC 4.0 that allows non-commercial reuse so that it can be used to develop a University-level course on wildland fires.
    • The video series is posted on the website of the UL Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI, https://fsri.org). UL/FSRI is a member of the IFSC.
    • To access the video series, go to https://fsri.org/program-update/ifsc-wildland-fires-webinar-series or follow the instructions provided in this document