While we can get pretty far with a very simple approximation of what a fire is in our fire cfd, at some point our simplications are not enough. And there is a plenty of features and phenomena, for which we simply need a better tool to handle - carbon monoxide, soot, extinction, flashover behavior, and what happens when ventilation disappears. At the IAFSS symposium, we sit down with Professor Bart Merci (Ghent University), fresh off delivering the Howard Emmons Invited Plenary Lecture, to talk about what it really takes to model turbulent combustion in real fires without asking practitioners to become full-time combustion scientists.

We start with the engineering reality check: you do not get unlimited mesh resolution, unlimited runtime, or the luxury of endless sensitivity studies. As Bart says - "you need to pick your battles". That practical constraint shapes everything, from whether LES is a smart choice to how you treat the “unseen” physics inside a CFD cell. Bart breaks down turbulence in plain terms, explains why the largest eddies dominate entrainment and smoke movement, and shows how mesh decisions can quietly decide whether LES outperforms unsteady RANS in practical smoke control and compartment fire problems.

Then we go deep on sub-grid combustion models. We unpack why infinitely fast chemistry can be acceptable in well-ventilated flames yet collapses in under-ventilated conditions, where toxicity, soot, and extinction dominate the risk picture. Bart explains a finite-rate, autoignition-informed approach that uses detailed chemistry offline to tune simplified reactions, then applies flamelet concepts and turbulence measures to predict reaction rates and species production inside each cell, including ignition and extinction behavior without relying on a guessed “critical flame temperature.”

We close with what’s next: validation in compartments, microgravity as a brutal test of “universality,” and why advanced non-intrusive diagnostics could finally improve near-wall heat transfer and flame-surface interaction. If you care about CFD, FDS modeling limits, fire dynamics, and the future of practical fire safety engineering, you’ll want this one.

If you would like to read more on the topic, here is Bart's paper that accompanied his brilliant lecture. Figure 3 is what we discuss at the end of the episode.

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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

A timber column can survive the heating phase of a fire resistance test and still collapse later, after the flames are gone. We know there is so much more to structures in fires than the test demonstrates, but how much exactly do we know about timber nowadays? In this episode we try to dive deeper and discuss mass timber fire safety, structural fire engineering, and what a fire resistance rating does and does not tell us.

I’m joined by Dr. Felix Wiesner from the University of British Columbia, this year’s IAFSS Proulx Award recipient, to unpack his review on mass timber load-bearing capacity in fire across scales. We start where most design decisions begin: full-scale furnace tests and the practical reality that many modern timber elements are too large, too new, or too costly to test under load. From there we dig into the reduced cross-section method, charring rate assumptions, and the controversial “zero-strength layer” that turns heated wood into a simplified design allowance, even as uncertainty and code-to-code differences persist.

Then we turn to the decay phase and delayed failure, connecting recent column results to the bigger question of performance-based design for compartment fires that heat and cool. To model that behaviour, we need credible links between temperature, strength reduction, and elastic modulus reduction, and we need to care about how the data were generated: steady-state oven tests versus transient tests where timber is loaded first and heated with steep gradients.

Finally, we go down to the microscale and nanoscale, where moisture migration and even hydrogen-bond changes in cellulose help explain why “loaded while heating and cooling” can permanently reshape capacity. If you work with mass timber buildings, timber fire design, Eurocode approaches, or structural safety in fire, this is a deep reset on what matters most.

Read about the IAFSS Awards here https://www.iafss2026.com/awards

Read the whole paper with a more in-depth view on the subject "From nano-to megastructure: A review of mass timber load-bearing capacity in fire"

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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

Fire science should have its place at the fireground, yet I've learned how hard it is to communicate it with the key stakeholder - the firefighters. It's not my isolated experience, and that tension drives our conversation with Steve Kerber, Vice President at UL Research Institutes Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI). Today we dig into the real craft of communicating fire dynamics to firefighters without losing the truth of the science.

We talk about why experience alone can mislead when every incident is full of unknowns, and how repeatable research can “rewind the tape” to test tactics under controlled conditions. Steve explains how measurements like temperature, heat flux, and toxic gas concentration can clarify what different decisions actually do to survivability and operational time windows. We also get honest about the trust gap between lab work and the messy reality firefighters see every day, especially when buildings and contents evolve faster than training programs.

From there, we get practical: how FSRI listens to a more complete voice of the fragmented fire service using advisory boards and fire service technical panels, how to reach line firefighters through the media and training pathways they already rely on, and why “simplify, don’t dumb down” is the way to teach concepts like ventilation-limited fire, flashover, and ventilation control at scale. Steve shares how video, clear visuals, and well-designed props can build the muscle memory crews need under pressure, plus the story of how research challenged the old fear that exterior water “pushes fire.”

We also cover a clear win where technical research and health research meet: firefighter exposure and cancer prevention, and why that evidence changed behavior across the profession. If you care about fire protection engineering, evidence-based firefighting, firefighter safety, and turning research into real-world outcomes, this one is for you.

The Fire Science Show was built around the mission to communicate better. This is the kind of episode that is perfect for the occasion... as we are celebrating the 5th anniversary of the podcast today! Thank you all for being with us for the 5 years!

If you would like some additional resources:

• https://fsri.org/resources All the resources by FSRI. A masterclass on how good communication looks like.
• Utilizing Research to Enhance Fire Service Knowledge - Steve Kerber's PhD Thesis very relevant to the topic we discuss today

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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.