PhD Studentship at Imperial College on computational pyrolysis

The Haze Lab at Imperial College London is looking for a top UK or EU student interested in fire science and modelling who would like to do a PhD thesis with Dr Guillermo Rein on computational pyrolysis (see related work in this post  and this paper). We are already interviewing candidates, and the position will be filled before mid October.

The student will be hosted in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Ours is one of the best and largest Mechanical Engineering departments in the world. This studentship includes registration fee (£4,000 per year) and a stipend (~£1,300 per month, tax free) for three years and a half. The requirements are a 1st Honours MEng or MSc degree in engineering (ME, ChE, CE, physics, mathematics or chemistry), and a high motivation in advancing the state of the art of science and technology.

Send an email with CV attached to Dr Guillermo Rein.

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Validation and Fire Modelling

Paper submission deadline: 15th Aug, 2014

Validation remains an essential activity for the continuous improvement of computational fire modelling skills. By validation, we refer to the determination of the expected level of accuracy and the range of applicability of a given fire model by means of comparison to experiments (or higher hierarchy models).

Papers are invited as part of a special issue of Fire Technology devoted to validation studies of modelling of any fire phenomena (eg, pyrolysis, flames, compartment fires, wildfires, structural response, toxicity). Of interest are topics that contribute towards the understanding of its strengths and weaknesses, and include among others:

•  Validation techniques

•  High-fidelity modelling

•  Benchmark experiments

•  Multi-model comparison

•  A priori vs. a posteriori

•  Round robin studies

 

 

   Call for Papers: Special Issue Validation and Fire Modelling

* Editors of this issue are :

Dr Guillermo Rein, Imperial College London, UK, g.rein@imperial.ac.uk

Dr Randall J McDermott, NIST, USA, randall.mcdermott@nist.gov

*Fire Technology* (http://www.springer.com/10694)

FT is the interdisciplinary journal by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and Springer, spanning the whole range of fire safety science and engineering. It is the oldest fire journal, publishing uninterruptedly since 1965. The aims are to provide and advocate for research and education in fire safety engineering, and reduce the worldwide burden of fire hazards.

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*Paper Submission*

Authors are encouraged to submit high-quality, original work that has neither appeared in, nor is under consideration by, other journals. All open submissions will be peer reviewed subject to the standards of the journal. Manuscripts based on previously published conference papers must be extended substantially. The journal accepts three types of manuscripts (full papers, case studies and short communications). Letters to the Editor are also considered. Manuscripts should be submitted to: http://fire.edmgr.com. Please choose article type “Validation of Fire Modelling" when submitting.

Distinguished award for peat fire paper

I am delighted to announce that our peat fire paper has received the 2013 Distinguished Paper Award on Fire Research at the 34th International Symposium on Combustion. This research award is given biannually by the Combustion Institute.

The work studies the chemistry of smouldering combustion of peat. Peat fires, like those causing haze episodes in South East Asia, are the largest fires on Earth but a poorly understood, yet extensive source of greenhouse gases, and are emerging as a hot topic in climate-change mitigation. These novel combustion experiments provide the framework to study smouldering dynamics by carefully varying the controlling mechanisms and providing burning conditions that otherwise cannot be obtained.This multidisciplinary paper merges the fields of combustion and geoscience, and serves as an example of mechanical engineering contributing to understand Earth-science disciplines like ecology, biodiversity, and biogeochemistry.