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For full details of the seminar and registration, please visit the event website.
Please briefly explain your role, involvement, and experience with regards to fire modelling
Francesco Restuccia (FR): I am a Senior Lecturer at KCL focusing on thermal and fire research. My work on fire modelling has primarily focused on batteries, namely thermal aspects of batteries, divided in 3 areas: (i) fire safety of batteries, specifically how and why batteries ignite and the consequences of ignition, (ii) thermal optimisation to improve lifetime of batteries and avoid degradation and (iii) modelling thermal runaway propagation. I am also working on fire modelling for wildfire spread, but will not be presenting on this topic at the conference.
What is the top challenge facing your industry at present?
FR: I think there are several, but from the modelling of battery fires, I would say a complete understanding of why and how battery failures come to be and how to prevent or suppress them. Using experimental data to help develop and validate a comprehensive multi-physics model of battery fire modelling will help with trying to solve this challenge.
How would you say your industry has evolved over the past two years?
FR: Models are being developed to predict more complex scenarios, which can really help scale up the cases we can understand (not just the fundamental materials making up a system but also the understanding the complex environments they operate in).
What developments are going on in your industry that may have an impact on the development of future modelling methods?
FR: Our community has been growing very quickly over the past years, and there has been an influx of talent from other sectors to augment expertise and knowledge base in our area. There’s been a large growth in models that use AI tools to analyse large data sets for patterns, which I find very exciting.
What will you be presenting at the IMechE: Fire Modelling seminar and how will this benefit participants?
FR: I will be presenting on Fire Modelling for Lithium-ion Battery Safety: From Cell Level to Battery Energy Storage Systems. The benefit to participants will be to learn about some of the academic approaches to modelling battery fires that can be extended to real-life scenarios.
Which other speakers and presentations are you looking forward to hearing at the forthcoming seminar?
FR: I am really looking forward to hearing Prof Wegrzynski’s talk on Modelling Tunnel Fires: Where Lies the Real Challenge? As he has built an extensive set of models over the past decades and I am curious to find out his approach to the problem.
Why is it important for engineers and industry to come together at this event and share best practice?
FR: There is a need for synergistic approaches to the challenges in the field of fire science, where a variety of expertise is required, both from the academic community and the industrial communities. It is great to share best practices from both.
The Improving Fire Safety Through Simulation and Modelling 2024 will take place on 11 June 2024 a the ICC Birmingham.
Building on 2022's popular event, this seminar will cover the work of mechanical engineers to model fire across a range of disciplines and application areas. Whether modelling smoke, evacuation routes or material choices, understanding the computational methods of modelling is essential.
Featuring input from modelling practitioners, academic researchers and experts, attendees will gain a clear understanding of which tools, software and development platforms are the most effective in individual, real world scenarios.
For full details of the seminar and registration, please visit the event website.