Research

The chair's research activities cover:

Development of new numerical methods in the field of fire dynamics
Visibility and flame spread modelling with the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS)
Design of experiments for model validation, in cooperation with the IAS-7 at the Forschungszentrum Jülich

Further information can be found on the website of the Fire Dynamics division at the Forschungszentrum Jülich.

In case of fire, one of the threads is the inhabited perception of evacuation signs. With our research we aim to understand the involved physical phenomena (light-smoke interaction) and the human perception of signs. For this, we conduct real-scale fire experiments and develop new theoretical models. All this leads to a better, i.e. more realistic, numerical prediction in CFD-based simulation models and smoke representation in VR.

Applied methods:

Experimental: Room Scale Fires following EN 54, Optical Cameras, MIREX, ELPI+
Theoretical: Tomography, Mie-Theory, Image Processing, Ray-Tracing

Selected fundamental publications (all open access):

"Remote sensing of the light-obscuring smoke properties in real-scale fires using a photometric measurement method", Kristian Börger, Alexander Belt, Thorsten Schultze and Lukas Arnold, Fire Technology, 2024, DOI:10.1007/s10694-023-01470-z
"Extinction coefficients from aerosol measurements", Christoph Gnendiger, Thorsten Schultze, Kristian Börger, Alexander Belt and Lukas Arnold, Fire Safety Journal, 2024, DOI:10.1016/j.firesaf.2024.104110
"Assessing performance of LEDSA and Radiance method for measuring extinction coefficients in real-scale fire environments", Kristian Börger, Jennifer Ellingham, Alexander Belt, Thorsten Schultze, Stefan Bieder, Elizabeth Weckman and Lukas Arnold, Fire Safety Journal, 2023, DOI:10.1016/j.firesaf.2023.103929
"Spatiotemporal measurement of light extinction coefficients in compartment fires", Lukas Arnold, Alexander Belt, Thorsten Schultze and Lea Sichma, Fire and Materials, 2021, DOI:10.1002/fam.2841

Selected application-oriented publications (all open access):

"A waypoint based approach to visibility in performance based fire safety design", Kristian Börger, Alexander Belt and Lukas Arnold, Fire Safety Journal, 2024, DOI:10.1016/j.firesaf.2024.104269
"A map representation of the ASET-RSET concept", Benjamin Schröder, Lukas Arnold and Armin Seyfried, Fire Safety Journal, 2021, DOI:10.1016/j.firesaf.2020.103154
"Knowledge-and Perception-based route choice modelling in case of fire", Benjamin Schröder, David Haensel, Mohcine Chraibi, Lukas Arnold, Armin Seyfried and Erik Andresen, Human Behaviour in Fire, 2015, LINK

The prediction of the cause of a fire, thus the spread of it, is one of the major challenges in fire safety science. It allows to determine the dynamics of the fire under consideration of the relevant physical and chemical processes, and especially the behaviour of the burning material. We conduct experiments on the micro scale to understand the pyrolysis of the material, i.e. the thermal decomposition, to determine the relevant material parameter. With these, we utilise computation fluid dynamics models to predict the flame spread in large scale experiments.

Applied methods:

Experimental apparatuses: TGA, MCC, Cone Calorimeter, Tube Furnace, Real-Scale Fire Experiments
Experimental diagnostics: IR Thermography, PIV, LDA
Theoretical techniques: Computational Fluid Dynamics, Pyrolysis Modelling, Inverse Modelling, Multivariate Global Sensitivity Analysis
Computational Hardware: High Performance Systems at BUW (Pleiades) and at FZJ (JURECA)

Selected experimental publications (all open access):

"The Tube Furnace with Online Mass Loss Measurement as a New Bench Scale Test for Pyrolysis", Karen De Lannoye, Alexander Belt, Ernst-Arndt Reinecke and Lukas Arnold, Fire Technology, 2024, DOI:10.1007/s10694-024-01590-0
"The influence of experimental conditions on the mass loss for TGA in fire safety science", Karen De Lannoye, Corinna Trettin, Alexander Belt, EA Reinecke, Roland Goertz and Lukas Arnold, Fire Safety Journal, 2024, DOI:10.1016/j.firesaf.2023.104079

Selected theoretical publications (all open access):

"Sensitivity analysis for an effective transfer of estimated material properties from cone calorimeter to horizontal flame spread simulations", Tássia LS Quaresma, Tristan Hehnen and Lukas Arnold, Fire Safety Journal, 2024, DOI:10.1016/j.firesaf.2024.104116
"PMMA pyrolysis simulation–from micro-to real-scale", Tristan Hehnen and Lukas Arnold, Fire Safety Journal, 2023, DOI:10.1016/j.firesaf.2023.103926
"Inverse modelling of pyrolization kinetics with ensemble learning methods", Patrick Lauer, Lukas Arnold and Fabian Brännström, Fire Safety Journal, 2023, DOI:10.1016/j.firesaf.2023.103744
"Numerical Fire Spread Simulation Based on Material Pyrolysis—An Application to the CHRISTIFIRE Phase 1 Horizontal Cable Tray Tests", Tristan Hehnen, Lukas Arnold and Saverio La Mendola, Fire, 2020, DOI:10.3390/fire3030033
"Application cases of inverse modelling with the PROPTI framework", Lukas Arnold, Tristan Hehnen, Patrick Lauer, Corinna Trettin and Ashish Vinayak, Fire Safety Journal, 2019, DOI:10.1016/j.firesaf.2019.102835