Fire and Smoke Modelling Lecture: giving back to academic community

Members of our team were invited to share their industry knowledge, experience and insight at a lecture at the University of Edinburgh last week. Former student and OFR colleague, Ieuan Rickard along with Andrew Basford provided an industry perspective on fire and smoke modelling, outlining the what, why, when and how in a presentation that supplemented students’ learning undertaken this semester. Here, Ieuan tells us more about the event.

It was an honour to return to my former university last week, where I was given the opportunity to talk to students, giving them an industry perspective on fire and smoke modelling.

Flanked by my colleague Andrew, we gave a lecture that provided an additional insight into how fire and smoke modelling is applied in real life, and the considerations resulting from the design process.

During our talk, Andrew and I presented lots of case studies and examples which made use of a variety of different analysis approaches from simple hand calculations to more complex methods. 

The main points discussed included Regulatory framework of Fire Safety Engineering – how do calculations and modelling exercises fit? What are the appropriate tools for the job? When and why not to use Computational Fluid Dynamics? as well as CFD, modelling, tips and advice on the appropriate use of CFD and advanced uses of simple models.

Edinburgh holds a very special place in my heart. My fellow OFR colleague Ondrej Vesely and I both formed the early foundations of our career here and last year he, Andrew and I joined forces to give a similar lecture online. 

It was great to be back in person this time; we spent an hour after the lecture answering questions and entering into lively discussions. It’s a privilege to be here supporting the students who we hope will one day also become fire engineers!