Multiple-item fire spread in residential occupancies including room effects and quantification of uncertainty
PhD Candidate: Greg Baker
Senior Supervisor: Dr. Michael Spearpoint
Co-Supervisors: Associate Professor Charles Fleischmann, Ms Colleen Wade
Research Aims
The primary objective of the PhD research project is to develop functionality for the new enhanced design tool which incorporates fire spread between multiple items into an automated, probabilistic “design fire generator” (DFG). Although BRANZFIRE currently includes a fire growth model for combustible room lining materials (3), which makes it superior to many fire zone models, the user still has to exercise subjective judgement in estimating what design fire(s) to input - the DFG feature will eliminate this level of subjectivity. This overall combination of features will arguably make BRANZFIRE one of the most sophisticated fire zone models of its type available to the fire engineering community.
Specific Areas of Study
More specifically, the two general areas of study involved in the proposed PhD project are to:
1. Develop, with some experimental validation, a physics-based multiple-item fire spread sub model applicable to room fires.
2. Develop a methodology for quantifying uncertainty associated with residential fire scenarios and the spatial arrangement of items or objects in a room and use the fire spread sub model to ultimately generate probabilistic design fires. This will include a Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) simulation procedure that uses statistical sampling techniques.
These two areas cover the extent of this PhD research proposal.