Every two years the Structures in Fire Conference is held. This year it was held in New Jersey at Princeton University. It was a fantastic trip with two of my research team student members to take in the ninth iteration of the conference. And as always a great learning experience re-connecting with old friends and…
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Calgary and a Steel Educators Forum
Spent the greater part of last weekend attending the CISC (steel construction) Educators forum. Many similarities to the Steel in Fire forum which was back in Europe. It was quite interesting and a really good chance for open dialogue with many industry organisations. Particularly seeing a number of very interesting constructions being made was also…
Creep of Prestressing Steels in Fire
Our new paper, Creep of Prestressing Steels in fire, is now in press in the journal Fire and Materials (you can access it here; an open access version is to come). It is a great piece about prestressing steels used in Post-tensioned structures. We show how high- temperature creep is effected by the chemical composition of…
Annual Concrete Labs at Carleton
Teaching the undergrad students about emerging materials this week. To make our labs more educational this year (with massive amounts of extra safety protocols added), we conducted several concrete compression tests on conventional concrete wrapped in a carbon fiber reinforced polymer (frp). The students are able to compare their normal conventional concrete compression cylinder tests to…
Steel Stub Column Undergrad Lab
We did a very ad hoc style image correlation test using a steel stub column in the undergrad labs. Though not really an accurate way to adhere image correlation paint though, however; it was a good illustration of observing yielding and buckling effects on the column as the test progressed. Images in this video were…
Growing Fire Engineering in Canada
There is no question when you travel through Toronto you look to the sky and imagine the possibilities for iconic structures and you do see first hand the structural revolution occurring there. And more so, if your aware, you ask what this means for Canadian fire engineering design. Buildings are becoming very complex. In Toronto alone,…
New Book on Post-tensioned Concrete in fire
A new book will be published by Springer titled; Structural Fire Performance of Contemporary Post-tensioned Concrete Construction. The book is available now. You can now order or download it here . The book features: A follow up to my highly cited Fire Safety Journal 2011 literary review paper - doubling the amount of tests analyzed; New insights on bonded post-tensioned concrete construction; Concise…
Fifth Protect workshop
Last week myself, and some stellar students working with me, attended the Fifth International Workshop on Performance, Protection & Strengthening of Structures under Extreme Loading held at Michigan State University organised by Drs. Kodur and Banthia. The workshop would be what I would consider one of the more major extreme event (structural fire being my focus) research gatherings in North America…
Reigniting a Candle
Every year candle fires can be attributed to over 100 civilian deaths, as well as nearly 900 fire fighter injuries. They represent nearly 4% of civilian home fire deaths (NFPA stats). Candles are by far a serious and not to be misunderstood beast. On the days after where many observed Earth Hour, thousands would have lit these beasts,…
Museum of Fire
Last week I had the pleasure to travel back to (my second home) in Edinburgh. On this trip there were several things I never got a chance to do - and with my passion of studying technology history - one which I should have. Top on my list was to visit the Museum of Fire (at the Lothian…
YorkU Fire Research Team 