Civil & Natural Resources

Civil and Natural Resources Engineering

Research

A wide range of research happens in the Fire Engineering programme. The programme is supported by the New Zealand Fire Service and various other organisations.

For Master's students, individual research topics must be selected by the end of June. The research may be on any topic relevant to fire safety in buildings, if a member of the academic staff will act as supervisor.

Many of the past research is available for on-line viewing.

Recent areas of research include:

Computer modelling

Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS)

FDS is available from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The model has been extensively used for our research work. Recent projects have looked using FDS to model road tunnel fires and comparison with balcony spill plume measurements. Work is also ongoing to transfer CAD files into FDS.

         FDS screen shot   FDS screen shot

FDS image
     FDS generated image

Key publications

    • Harrison R, Spearpoint M J. The balcony spill plume: Entrainment of air into a flow from a compartment opening to a higher projecting balcony. Fire Technology, Vol. 43, No. 4, pp. 301-317 [weblink]. 2007.
    • Cheong M K, Spearpoint M J, Fleischmann C M. Design fires for vehicles in road tunnels. Proc. 7th International Conference on Performance-Based Codes and Fire Safety Design Methods, Auckland, New Zealand, pp.229-240 [weblink]. 2008.
    • Dimyadi J A W, Spearpoint M, Amor R. Generating Fire Dynamics Simulator geometrical input using an IFC-based building information model. Journal of Information Technology in Construction, Vol. 12, pp. 443-457 [weblink]. 2007.

    BRANZFIRE screen shotBRANZFIRE

    The BRANZFIRE zone model is developed by Colleen Wade at BRANZ Ltd. Research at the University helps Colleen add new modules to the software and provide verification of its capabilities. Recent work has added a glass fracture module to the software, examined the model's ability to predict sprinkler activation provided a method to automatically show building geometry by electronic data transfer.

    Key publications

    • Parry R, Wade C A, Spearpoint M J. Implementing a glass fracture module in the BRANZFIRE zone model. Journal of Fire Protection Engineering, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 157-183. 2003.
    • Spearpoint M J. Transfer of architectural data from the IFC model to a fire simulation software tool. Journal of Fire Protection Engineering, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 271-292 [weblink]. 2007.
    • Wade C, Spearpoint M J, Bittern A, Tsai K. Assessing the sprinkler activation predictive capability of the BRANZFIRE fire model. Fire Technology, Vol. 43, No. 3, September, pp.175-193 [weblink]. 2007.

    SAFIR modelSAFIR

    The SAFIR structural fire performance model is developed by Jean-Marc Franssen at the University of Leige, Belgium. We have been using the model to investigate the performance of reinforced concrete under fire conditions.

    Key publications

    • J Chang, R.P. Dhakal, P.J. Moss and A.H. Buchanan, Connections on Hollow-Core Floor Systems for Enhanced Fire Performance, Designing Concrete Structures for Fire Safety, ACI Special Publication, SP-255-9, 2008
    • Bong M W, Buchanan A H, Dhakal R P, Moss P J. Fire performance of steel portal frame buildings. Proc. 19th Australasian Conference on the Mechanics of Structures and Materials, Christchurch, November 2006, pp. 457-462.

    Evacuation models

    Work is being carried out to develop a Monte Carlo risk-based network model. Other research has evaluated the results from the Simulex evacuation model with analytical and experimental results.

    Key publications

    • Ko S Y, Spearpoint M J, Teo A. Trial evacuation of an industrial premises and evacuation model comparison. Fire Safety Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 2, pp.91-105 [weblink]. 2007.

      Evacuation model image