Edinburgh Fire Research Centre

The Edinburgh Fire Research Center (formerly the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering) is the research group at The Institute of Infrastructure and Environment, University of Edinburgh, conducting research in Fire Protection Engineering.

History

The University of Edinburgh was the first university to offer a degree in Fire engineering. Leaders in the field came to Edinburgh to study and research under the supervision of Rasbash, a pioneer of the discipline, and Dougal Drysdale, author of a textbook on the subject.^[1] Jose Torero held the BRE/RAE Chair in Fire Safety Engineering from 2004 to 2012. Albert Simeoni held the BRE chair from 2013 to 2015. Grunde Jomaas held the BRE chair from 2016 to 2021. Teaching and research in fire safety continues at Edinburgh under the leadership of Prof Luke Bisby, professor of fire and structures.

Staff

The staff of the Edinburgh Fire Research Centre comprises six academics, several research associates, about 20-25 postgraduate researchers and some undergraduate researchers.

Teaching

The Centre supports the Structural and Fire Safety Engineering degrees (BEng, MEng and MSc) as well as a number of short courses for professionals.

The centre is part of the International Master of Science in Fire Safety Engineering consortium. The joint degree started in September 2010 and involves the universities of Edinburgh (UK), Ghent (Belgium) and Lund (Sweden).^[2]

Research expertise

Structural Fire Engineering
Fire Modelling
Ignition and burning of solid fuels
Large-scale fire experiments
Concrete, Steel and wood response to fire
Tunnel fires
Subsurface fires
Wildfires
Smouldering combustion

Large-scale fire test

The Cardington tests were a series of large-scale fire tests conducted over several years from the early 1990s in a real steel-framed structure at the former airship hangar at Cardington, UK.

The Dalmarnock tests were a series of fire experiments conducted in July 2006 in a real 1960s concrete tower block in Dalmarnock, Glasgow, UK.

Publications

The Centre publishes more than 100 conference papers and a dozen peer-reviewed journal papers per year. Some can be publicly accessed via their Digital Repository.

References

External links

The Edinburgh Fire Research Centre official website
Several publications from The Edinburgh Fire Research Centre
"Skyscraper Fire Fighters'", BBC Horizon TV show (aired on Tuesday 24th, 9pm in BBC Two).

[1] An Introduction to Fire Dynamics, Dougal Drysdale, 2nd Edition, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, 1998

[2] New International Master in Fire Safety Engineering approved by Erasmus Mundus (accessed 31 July 09)

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