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With the advent of modern technologies toward motoring the vehicles with connectivity of vehicle networks, the entire electrical system of the vehicle is becoming more and more complex. Also, the sales of vehicles in all categories are growing at a very high rate across the globe. With this heavy loading of electrical complexity, nowadays vehicles are becoming more vulnerable to thermal incidences. A vehicle fire is a very serious safety incident, which may lead to loss of human life, results in property loss, business discontinuity and substantial public cost. Vehicle fire incidents encourage manufacturers to take proactive measures to ensure “no fire incident” on the vehicle. The paper explains how the team devised a systematic approach to pre-empt all potential thermal risks at the early stages of vehicle design and eliminate all the thermal concerns by implementing the preventive measures. Fire path analysis evaluates vulnerable components on the vehicle that may cause thermal incidents, how fire can propagate from the initial source to the last carriers and how to break the fire propagation path from source to the next carrier components on the vehicle. It has been implemented fire path analysis on passenger cars, commercial vehicles, buses and electric vehicles. It has been seen a 91% drop in thermal incidents in productionised vehicles and ensured flawless launching of the vehicle; hence fire path analysis is a smart tool to prevent vehicle fire incidents at early stages of the design to safeguard precious human life.

Flame retardants mitigate the threat of fire from inherently flammable materials responsible for sustaining a high standard of living. Although bulk flame retardants have proven effective for many years, there is now increased interest in the use of surface treatments to localize flame-retardant chemistry at the exterior of a material, where combustion occurs, in an effort to preserve desirable bulk properties and minimize the amount of additive needed. This Review provides a historical overview that leads to the most promising surface treatments that will help pave the way for developing more effective and non-intrusive flame retardants in the future. The way in which a fire transpires, and the various chemistries and mechanisms used to counteract fire propagation, are discussed. Challenges that remain to improve current flame-retardant surface treatments are also addressed, as the success of these treatments depends on the scalability, durability and ability to impart desired functionality without conferring environmental problems. Fire endangers lives and property worldwide. Significant efforts are underway to develop flame-retardant surface treatments that minimize the weight added to a given object and preserve its intrinsic mechanical properties. This review summarizes the history and latest developments in flame-retardant treatments, as well as outlining the challenges ahead.

This paper aims to develop a two-layer emergency logistics system with a single depot and multiple demand sites for wildfire suppression and disaster relief. For the first layer, a fire propagation model is first built using both the flame-igniting attributes of wildfires and the factors affecting wildfire propagation and patterns. Second, based on the forecasted propagation behavior, the emergency levels of fire sites in terms of demand on suppression resources are evaluated and prioritized. For the second layer, considering the prioritized fire sites, the corresponding resource allocation problem and vehicle routing problem (VRP) are investigated and addressed. The former is approached using a model that can minimize the total forest loss (from multiple sites) and suppression costs incurred accordingly. This model is constructed and solved using principles of calculus. To address the latter, a multi-objective VRP model is developed to minimize both the travel time and cost of the resource delivery vehicles. A heuristic algorithm is designed to provide the associated solutions of the VRP model. As a result, this paper provides useful insights into effective wildfire suppression by rationalizing resources regarding different fire propagation rates. The supporting models can also be generalized and tailored to tackle logistics resource optimization issues in dynamic operational environments, particularly those sharing the same feature of single supply and multiple demands in logistics planning and operations (e.g., allocation of ambulances and police forces). © 2017 The Author(s)

The Two-Stage forest fire spread prediction methodology was developed to enhance forest fire evolution forecast by tackling the uncertainty of some environmental conditions. However, there are parameters, such as wind, that present a variation along terrain and time. In such cases, it is necessary to couple forest fire propagation models and complementary models, such as meteorological forecast and wind field models. This multi-model approach improves the accuracy of the predictions by introducing an overhead in the execution time. In this paper, different multi-model approaches are discussed and the results show that the propagation prediction is improved. Exploiting multi-core architectures of current processors, we can reduce the overhead introduced by complementary models.

The paper presents an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), consisting of several aerial vehicles and a central station, for forest fire monitoring. Fire monitoring is defined as the computation in real-time of the evolution of the fire front shape and potentially other parameters related to the fire propagation, and is very important for forest fire fighting. The paper shows how an UAS can automatically obtain this information by means of on-board infrared or visual cameras. Moreover, it is shown how multiple aerial vehicles can collaborate in this application, allowing to cover bigger areas or to obtain complementary views of a fire. The paper presents results obtained in experiments considering actual controlled forest fires in quasi-operational conditions, involving a fleet of three vehicles, two autonomous helicopters and one blimp.

High-level control of fire is very attractive to artists, as it facilitates a detail-free user interface to make desirable flame effects. In this paper, a unified framework is proposed for modeling and animating fire under general geometric constraints and evolving rules. To capture the fire projection on user’s model animation, we develop a modified closest-point method (MCPM) to handle dynamic situations while maintaining the robustness of the closest-point method. A control blue core (CBC) is designed and generated automatically from the fire projection at each time step. It translates the geometric constraints and the user-specified evolving rules into implicit control conditions. Our L-Speed function leverages CBC’s shape information and conducts the large-scale motion of fire, leaving the basic physically-based model to refine simulation details. The experimental results show the effectiveness of our method for modeling fire propagation along complex curves or surfaces, or forming a flaming shape and following its motion.

One of the challenges still open to wildland fire simulators is the capacity of working under real-time constrains with the aim of providing fire spread predictions that could be useful in fire mitigation interventions. We propose going one step beyond the classical wildland fire prediction by linking evolutionary optimization strategies to the traditional scheme with the aim of emulating an "ideal" fire propagation model as much as possible. In order to accelerate the fire prediction, this enhanced prediction scheme has been developed in a fashion on a Linux cluster using MPI. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis has been carried out to determine the input parameters that we can fix to their typical values in order to reduce the search-space involved in the optimization process and, therefore, accelerates the whole prediction strategy.

Fire tests were conducted using the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) UL 1626 Fire Test for residential sprinklers. The results indicated that sprinkler performance in UL 1626 could not be reproduced due to differences in material flammability properties. This conclusion was reached in a cooperative effort with UL. Factory Mutual Research's Approval fire test that had been redesigned based on UL 1626 was thus subject to the same variability. A new fire test was developed using fuel with controlled material flammability parameters based upon the use of the ASTM E2058 Fire Propagation Apparatus. The new fuel package consists of a wood crib (one half the height of the one which was used in UL 1626) supported over a pan with heptane, two polyether foam cushions (about 60% greater in density than the foam previously used in UL 1626) measuring 34 in by 30 in by 3 in (864 mm by 762 mm by 76 mm) and \( \frac{1}{4}\) in (6 mm) Douglas Fir plywood paneling. The new fire test was shown in a series of sprinklered fire tests to provide a reproducible challenge to residential sprinklers comparable to that observed in the Factory Mutual Research and the Los Angeles Residential Test Programs.

Results of large-scale and bench-scale tests are reported on three EIFS (exterior insulation and finish systems) type facade assemblies. The large-scale tests were done according to a modified SP 105 test, while the bench-scale procedures followed CAN/ULC-S135. The tests were motivated by the current ISO deliberations to select an optimal international standard for testing facades against fire propagation hazards. The large-scale test showed distinct differences among the assemblies tested. However, certain difficulties were identified with the test, especially the smokiness of the fuel and the non-ideal dimensioning of the re-entrant corner. The bench-scale tests showed consistent results; such procedures may be useful for screening purposes.

A new specification test standard for cable fire propagation has recently been developed at Factory Mutual Research Corporation (FMRC), using FMRC's 50 kW-scale flammability apparatus. Guidelines for fire protection of grouped cables in non-combustible industrial and commercial occupancies have been formulated. Cables are classified into three groups on the basis of their fire propagation behavior: Group 1 cables: fire propagation beyond the ignition zone is not likely to occur and fire protection is not required; Group 2 cables: fire propagates slowly beyond the ignition zone and fire protection is required in most applications; and Group 3 cables: fire propagates rapidly beyond the ignition zone and fire protection is always required. This paper describes the concepts associated with the development of the standard test and fire protection guidelines for cables.

The burning characteristics of building materials are discussed. For assessing the fire behaviour of structural materials the following properties are relevant: combustibility, flame spread, and heat contribution. These characteristics are determined in different laboratory tests. However, the fire performance of structural elements in situ is of much greater importance with regard to fire protection in structures, and the resistance to fire and fire propagation are the most important criteria. International unification is proposed in the testing of fire propagation.

A three-dimensional model has been devised for predicting smoke and fire propagation within structures. Three generalized fire scenarios are sufficient to represent many design conditions.

The hazard of fire propagation across a wall or floor has been found to be very real in the case of many pipe-floor penetrations and in the case of pipe-wall penetrations under adverse air pressure differentials and where the system on the unexposed side of the wall is vented., Reprinted from: Fire Technology, v. 9, no. 1, February 1973, p. 5-14. ISSN: 0015-2684