Oppgave nr: BRANN6
Background:
Smouldering fires (fires with no flames) represent significant risks to dwellings, industry, and wildlands. These risks are associated with toxic emissions and degradation of materials, structures, and landscapes. Further risks are connected to the ability of smouldering fires to induce flaming fires and explosions. Smouldering, transition to flaming and explosions are challenging for domestic fire safety, for industry and fire departments. In our homes, the hazard is linked to incidents ignition of furniture, electrical appliances or other household items, and industrially the hazard is linked to incidents in for example grain elevators, silos containing sawdust and wood pellets.
Short description:
The objective of the project is to perform an experimental study of self-sustained smouldering in materials such as wood pellets, combustible building insulation etc, to study how changes in parameters such as degree of cooling, air inlet, size of the fuel bed etc affect the smouldering behavior. The study will also include analysis of the results and placing the findings into a larger context. This will be based on insight into the smoldering phenomenon gained from relevant scientific literature. The work will be closely linked to ongoing numerical work conducted at RISE Fire Research, and the candidate will get the opportunity to directly see how the experimental work is used for validation of the numerical work. The student should have interest in experimental work, research methodology and fire dynamics.
The study will be a part of the FRIC Fire Research and Innovation Centre, and a key element in the centre is communication of the research findings. The candidate will therefore be invited to participate and/or present their work in relevant seminars and conferences national or internationally. The project will be linked to the FRIC project Smouldering: Effects of cooling.
Number of students:
Contactperson at IBM: Anne Steen-Hansen, anne.steen-hansen@ntnu.no
External collaboration partner: RISE Fire Research