Details
The global built environment is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, emphasising the need for reductions to address climate change and biodiversity concerns. Timber, when responsibly sourced from well-managed forests, offers a low-carbon construction option with renewable qualities and the potential for carbon sequestration to help mitigate climate impacts. Timber thus offers substantial potential in mitigating the climate and biodiversity emergencies.
However, timber faces certain challenges due to its combustibility and the associated high insurance costs which heavily impact its feasibility. Traditional building regulations developed in the 20th century did not consider combustible materials which means they do not fit in the existing prescriptive frameworks and guidelines. Following the Grenfell Tower fire, combustible materials were prohibited on building exteriors due to limited knowledge of their fire performance. Additionally, modern buildings often feature larger open-plan spaces, deviating from the small cubic offices that were used to develop the current building regulations.
The combination of timber's combustibility and contemporary open-plan designs presents a extremely complex issue, challenging the adequacy of 20th century solutions and potentially impacting occupant safety and structural stability. To address the growing demand for timber construction and achieve carbon reduction goals, a new scientific approach is necessary to evaluate the thermomechanical behaviour of these structures and develop safer solutions.
This project seeks to investigate how the inclusion of timber in open-plan spaces influences fire dynamics and then establish simplified design guideline to enable its safe usage.
Objectives:
1. Characterise the change in fire behaviour (ejected from windows/doors and the fire exposure to the structure) due to the addition of timber.
2. Quantify the energy released through openings for large open plan compartments where the fire is small compared to the size of openings.
3. Assess the mechanical response of the structure based on the thermal exposures determined above.
4. Create a set of worst case design scenarios to produce design guidance to be used by designers.
The candidate should have a Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant engineering discipline (e.g. mechanical engineering, civil engineering, fire safety engineering) or similar STEM background (e.g. applied physics, mathematics or data science).
The project start date will be 01 October 2024.
Interested candidates are strongly encouraged to contact the project supervisors (Dr Martyn S. McLaggan, [email protected] or Dr Shan-Shan Huang, [email protected]) to discuss your interest in and suitability for the project prior to submitting your application. Please refer to the EPSRC DTP webpage (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/postgraduate/phd/scholarships/science-engineering) for detailed information about the EPSRC DTP and how to apply.
Funding Notes
The award will fund the full (UK or Overseas) tuition fee and UKRI stipend (currently £18,622 per annum) for 3.5 years, as well as a research grant to support costs associated with the project.References
"1. Law, Angus, and Rory Hadden. ""We need to talk about timber: fire safety design in tall buildings."" The Structural Engineer 3 (2020). https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/we-need-to-talk-about-timber-fire-safety-design-in-tall-buildings
2. Nothard, S., Lange, D., Hidalgo, J. P., Gupta, V., McLaggan, M. S., Wiesner, F., & Torero, J. L. (2022). Factors influencing the fire dynamics in open-plan compartments with an exposed timber ceiling. Fire Safety Journal, 129, 103564. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2022.103564
3. Xu, Hangyu, Ian Pope, Vinny Gupta, Jaime Cadena, Jeronimo Carrascal, David Lange, Martyn S. McLaggan et al. ""Large-scale compartment fires to develop a self-extinction design framework for mass timber—Part 1: Literature review and methodology."" Fire Safety Journal 128 (2022): 103523. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2022.103523
4. Torero, José L., et al. ""Revisiting the compartment fire."" Fire Safety Science 11 (2014): 28-45. http://dx.doi.org/10.3801/IAFSS.FSS.11-28"