1.0 Introduction

Fire is human best friend as the source of light and heat used in our daily life.

However, when it is out of control, it has no friends, no moral values and respect no

boundaries. For example, The Great Fire of 1910 was a historical, largest wildfire

incident that burned about three million acres forest over two days, and killed 87

people (mostly firefighters) in northeast Washington, northern Idaho and western

Montana (Teddy Roosevelt 2009). Besides that, shock waves and fire due to the

explosion at a chemical warehouse which stored large amount of hazardous and

flammable chemicals mainly sodium cyanide at Tianjin on 12 August 2015 has

caused thousands of car damaged, large amount of dead fish found in the

contaminated river and more than hundred dead. Based on these two fire incident, it is

apparent that uncontrolled fire would definitely lead to unnecessary tragedy and

damages.

The focus of fire protection has always been thought to limit the damage a fire

can cause. In earlier centuries, the goal was to confine fire to a city block. Today's

conventional water systems can confine a fire to a building, a floor and even to the

point of containing a fire within a single room. Water was, and still is, the primary

tool to control structural fires. However, with current technical sophistication,

containing a fire to a single area is not always enough. Critical facilities require an

even higher level of fire protection. Therefore, engineering plays significant and

undeniable role in the fire prevention and control to protect people, property, and their

environments from the harmful and destructive effects of fire and smoke.

The present study focuses on the important findings about the engineering’s

potential contributions in fire prevention and control. These findings are the result of

past engineering research conducted in conjunction with the fire service. The scope of

this report includes four areas, which are fire dynamics, advancement of fire

protection technology, .................(zingteng please fill in the blanks)................

2.0 Engineering’s Potential Contribution in Fire Prevention and Control2.1 Fire Dynamics

In United States of America, a fire department responds to fire every 23

seconds (The U.S. Fire Problem 2011). Each of these fires occur due to different

circumstances. For instance, electrical fires happen caused by improper electrical

wiring, overloading electrical outlets or appliance failure. However based on a science

perspective, most fires shares the same similarities. Fires occur due to exothermic

process with the fire triangle which consists of fuel, oxygen and heat as the three

essential elements to sustain the chemical reaction. The concept of fire triangle has

been applied to the fireground to enhance the comprehension of fire behaviour and

affect the choice of fire-fighting strategies. Over the decades, it has been gained great

concern from fire engineering to improve the study of fire behaviour and develop an

engineering approach and guidance to the protection of people and property from

unwanted fire. Therefore, the first engineering contribution in fire prevention and

control is fire dynamics.

There are two primary contributions of engineering discipline in the field of

fire dynamics. First, fire dynamics incorporate the interaction of chemistry and

material science. Fire dynamics is closely related to the study of chemical reaction of

fire which involve how the fire starts, grow, decay and extinguish. The early stage of

fire development where the fire progression is limited to a fuel source and the thermal

hazard is localized to the area of burning material. In the growth phase, the heat-

release rate increases until a critical stage which is flashover, such that the material

surface exposed to the thermal radiation exceeds 600°C and simultaneous ignition of

all combustible material in an enclosed space (Fire Dynamics 2012). The decay stage

occurs when the as the fuel is depleted or the fire triangle breaks. Fire triangle, as

mentioned earlier, is the most fundamental understanding about fire science. Any fire

can be extinguished by removing either one of the elements in fire triangle to hinder

the chemical chain in the combustion process. For example, fire can be put off by

cutting off the oxygen supply using a fire blanket, or pouring water on the fire to

remove the heat.

In terms of material science, fire engineering researchers discover new

materials for fire-fighters’ protective clothing and equipment, and investigate theirs

applicability and effectiveness in the fireground. The thermal performance of fire

protection equipment is based on the thermophysical properties of the materials used,

such as thermal conductivity, specific heat, density, thermal spectral properties of

emissivity, transmissivity and reflectivity. One of the significant past research was the

2005 Thermal Protective Performance (TPP) test which was conducted by U. S. Fire

Administration partners with National Institute of Standards Technology to provide

temperature measurement of ten materials used on the surface of the outer shell, at the

moisture barrier layers inside the protective clothing system, and at the thermal liner

surface (Estimates of Thermal Conductivity 2005). This research gives a detailed

picture of how a protective clothing system performs when exposed to a given

thermal environment.

Second engineering contribution related to fire dynamics is the engineering

discipline of fluid mechanics and heat transfer. This two principles helps in the

controlling of flow path of fire. Depending on building configuration, a structure can

have several flow paths. Any fire-fighting operations carried out in the fire flow path

would cause firefighters at significant risk due to the increased flow of fire, smoke

and heat towards their locations. This was the case with the three Fire Department of

New York City (FDNY) firefighters who lost their lives in the Vandalia fire in

Brooklyn, the two Houston firefighters who lost their lives in a ranch house fire, and

the two San Francisco firefighters who were killed in the Diamond Heights fire (Fire

Dynamics 2012). The tactic of controlling fire flow path includes reducing additional

oxygen into the space to limit the fire development, heat release rate and smoke

production. Another way is to control the movement of the heat and smoke conditions

out of the fire area to the exterior and to the other areas within the building. Both

mentioned methods are based on controlling the pressure difference and fire

propagation by varying the building configuration via doors and windows opening

which require the contribution from engineering application of fluid mechanics and

heat transfer.

In addition, fire dynamics simulator is created to model the fire dynamics and

to solve practical fire problems in fire protection engineering.

Fire dynamics modelling used by fire engineering solves numerically a large eddy

simulation form of the Navier–Stokes equations suitable for thermally-driven flow,

with an emphasis on smoke and heat transport from fires. Simulation of fire behaviour

and flow path within a structure provides a better insight for firefighters to understand

the fire dynamics in different actual operating conditions and to control the fire in a

more efficient way.

2.2 Advanced Fire Protection TechnologyApart from the study of fire dynamics, the second engineering contribution is

developing the advanced fire protection technology. The main purpose for technology

advancement in fire prevention and control is to minimise or even eliminate the

limitations and drawbacks of those existing conventional fire protection system,

which often lead to slow fire detection and ineffective fire suppression.

A typical example of the limitation of conventional fire protection system is

conventional heat detector, which generally limited to indoors and is not applicable in

large open spaces such as shopping centres, airports, car parks and forests.

Conventional heat detectors with thermocouples as heat sensors require a close

proximity to the fire and most of them cannot provide additional information about

fire location, dimension, etc. In addition, conventional smoke detectors may take

longer time for carbon particles and smoke to reach the “point” detector. False alarms

are always triggered due to the presence of larger particles like dust particles inside

the detector chamber, or accidental damage to the alarm system. In the period 2011-

2012, Fire and Rescue Services in Britain received 584,500 callouts in which 53.4

percent were due to false alarms (The Causes of False Fire Alarms 2015). Another

example is the commercially used fire extinguisher powder would cause irritation to

mucous membranes and difficulties with breathing. The dry chemicals which provide

rapid knockdown of flames and are more effective than Halons, however they are

highly corrosive which will corrode and even destroy electronic, electromechanical

and mechanical components.

Over the last decade, building materials, furnishings and furniture have

undergone a major transformation from natural materials, such as wood and cotton, to

synthetic materials. Consequently, the risk to life and property has changed drastically

since burning synthetic materials release not only highly dangerous smoke and toxic

fumes, but also carbon monoxide at rates faster than natural materials, resulting in

dramatic reduction in the available time for escape. Therefore, the progress on fire

detection technologies has been substantial due to the engineering contribution in the

advancement of microelectronics and information technologies, as well as a greater

understanding of fire dynamics as discussed in the previous section. The following

discussion covers some of the recent technologies used in fire prevention and control

contributed by engineering discipline to improve effectiveness in fire detection and

fire suppression.

One of the new and promising technology used in fire prevention and control

is the distributed fiber optic temperature sensor which uses the entire optic fibre as the

heat sensor. The working principle of this technology is the pulsed light is launched

along the length of fibre optic, and any changes in the temperature along the fibre

optic can be measured by detecting the amount of reflected light when the fibre optic

is bent due to heating. The main advantage of optical fibre sensor cable is it can

respond much more quickly to temperature fluctuations due to its low mass. It is also

immune to all kinds of electromagnetic interference emissions. The sensor cable is

available for operation in for wide temperature range between -20 oC and 120 oC

(Review 2003).

Another example of engineering contribution in technology advancement of

fire protection system is the invention of Video Fire Detection (VFD) system which

can detect the presence of flames and smokes for coverage area of 100 km2 and

reduce the detection time as compared to the conventional smoke and heat detectors.

It also can provide essential information about the growth of fire and direction of

smoke propagation. In 2012, National Research Council Canada (NRCC) performed a

full-scale and environmental test to study the application of VFD systems for the

protection of large industrial applications and atria. The most significant engineered

feature in VFD system is it is able to detect obstructed fires, fires with nuisance

sources, fires under dark light and fires under wind condition very accurate within

short period even via the reflected lights and pattern of smoke produced (Centin et. al

2013).

Recently, on March 2015, a fire extinguisher that uses low, bass frequencies

sound wave to put out fires was invented by two engineering students. The sound

waves between 30 and 60 Hz produced could be used to separate the oxygen and

burning material. This invention is taken for further testing, perhaps it poses potential

commercial application in the future (New fire extinguisher 2015).

Figure 1 Low Bass Fire Extinguisher

In short, many new fire detection technologies developed over the last decade

have strong potential to reduce false alarms, increase sensitivity and dynamic

response to a fire as well as improve fire safety. Engineering has contributed

significant portion of effort in eliminating the limitations of conventional fire

detection.

Structural Design

According to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) survey on the

structural collapsed due to fire throughout US, Canada, Europe, Russia and South

America from 1970 to 2002, there are at least 22 of this kind incident which also

including the 911 incident. In case of building that doesn’t consider the fire safety for

the structural element during the design phase, the inconsideration will cause the

building will collapse in case of fire. The reason for this was due to that the fire will

melt down the column, joints, beam and others structural element, increasing the fire

load while reducing the structure elements load bearing capability. One of the

notorious incident was 911 world trade center tower collapsed incident, when the

plane crashed to one of the tower, the intense fire, heat and the explosion caused by

the crash plane produced possessed the temperature higher than 800oC, enough to

melt the its neighbor structure, weakening the structure load bearing capability and

eventually collapsed from the weaken column. Though away from the plane crash site

the structure is not affected by the heat, it was still collapsed due to the sudden

increase in load of the collapsed floor above. Therefore it is important role for

engineer to take fire loading into coincident.

In structural design sector, engineers have been contributed in studying and

researching the fire behavior, thermal response of the structural members and also the

structural response. For fire behavior, engineers study the fire performance of the

building element by conducting fire resistance test such as using the standard furnace

test. Besides that, engineers also study the factor affecting the fire behavior during the

pre and post flash over phase and heat release rate for each type of occupancies. As

for the thermal response of structural element, engineers have also contributed in

researching the temperature rise of the bare or protected element when subjected to

heat and also study the physical capability of the element. Lastly, in the structural

response section, engineers also contribute in obtaining the structural stability when in

fire by going through experiment such as fire test. Throughout the experiments and

tests, the fire resistance rating for the common materials was obtained for design

purpose. Fire resistance rating can be defined as the duration that the material can

withstand in case of fire and it is determined by fire resistance test.

Moreover, engineers also contributed or obliged in reviewing and improving the

standard and the rules for the structural design. For example, in designing the

structural frame for building more that 6th floor, engineers have to follow and design

the structural frame elements with the fire resistance rating of 1hour duration

according to the specific organization or department such as ISO and firefighting

department.

Material advancement

In material advancement sector, engineers have been contributed mostly in

researching and improving the fire resistance material and also determine the site

effect of the fire resistant material. For one example of fire resistance material is the

asbestos, though the material was first found in the ancient Greek island of Ewoia and

became one of the most useful material in the late 1800 century after the industrial

revolution due to its heat resistant capability and also other properties. Through the

research, in the mid of 1900s, the asbestos was found out to be causing serious health

problem and therefore being abundant and banned from there onward.

The example of the material invention and improvement is the fire proximity suit,

which is also known as silver bunker suit, allowing fire fighter to work in aircraft fire

incident. The material for this suit was first using the asbestos material, and change

and improve it by aluminized the suit after informed the healthy issue of using

asbestos material. Another example is the flame resistant polymer coating which is

invented by the Dr Jaime Grunlan, this flame resistant polymer coating was able to

resist fire without burning the polymer and it can be apply to lab cloth, medical

clothing, building, sofa and so on and the material is also environmental friendly. In

addition to it, another example was improvement of fire resisting material in

intumescent paint that is usually used in passive fire protection system such as fire

retardant Acrylic paint.

Fire Protection System

Fire protection system can be further categorized into two main categories which are

the active fire protection system and also the passive fire protection system. For the

active fire protection system, it can be defined as the fire suppression system that has

to be manually, automatically, or by electrical mean to activate. The purpose of the

active fire protection system is to extinguish the ignition point and suppress the spread

of the fire and detect and giving fire alarm to the occupants. Moreover, the active fire

protection system has to be maintaining from time to time to ensure the condition of

the system. For the passive fire protection system, it can be as the fire protection

system that holding its purpose to contain or slow down the fire spread from floor to

floor or from room to room by using any compartmentation or applying the resistant

door, fire curtain and so on. In addition to it, passive fire protections usually undergo

one installation and need no frequent maintenance on it.

In the fire protection system, engineers have been contributed in designing the fire

protection system and the fire equipment, identify the possible source of fire and

providing installation and maintenance of the system. In the contribution of

identifying the possible source of fire, engineers utilize some of the fire modelling

software or by referring to the Uniform Building by Law and Guideline to Fire

Protection to determine the source of the fire and the fire spread until the flash over

phase in order to determine the appropriate fire protection system to extinguish the

fire. In designation of firefighting system sector, engineer will design the appropriate

system and propose to the fire engineer or firefighting department to verify. The

finalize design after the verification will be used for that project and installation will

be done and maintenance for the firefighting system will undergo. Example of the

fire protection systems that design by engineers are wet riser system, dry riser system,

powered or natural smoke extraction system, external hydrant system, sprinkle

system, CO2 extinguishing system, hose reel system, compartmentation, down comer

system, escape facility and also the fire alarm and detection system. All of the system

design has to be following the basic standard which was set by fire department in

order to maintain the quality the effectiveness of the fire safety.

Besides that, engineers also contributed in the fire protection system as a role of

reviewing and improving the fire safety standard, rule and regulation. This has to be

done in order to improve the quality of fire safety and update the fire safety method as

the method of fire protection system improve from time to time. Example of

regulation that engineers take part in reviewing and improving the regulation is the

Fire Protection Guideline in Malaysia.

Other Contributions

Besides contribution in technology, material and design, engineers also contributed in

researching the possible ways to extinguish fire and the ignition point. One of the

examples was the AFO or Elide fire ball, it can be used to instantly extinguish the fire

point, acting as fire alarm when the fire extinguisher ball activated as it produced high

decibel up 100db to warn nearby people and lastly it can be used for both active and

passive fire protection system.

Moreover, engineers have also contributed in improving in old type building fire

safety. As the fire safety system or methodology improve from time to time, engineers

has to improve the fire safety level of the old type building so that the fire safety level

can be compatible to the modern type building. Besides that, engineers have to

improve the fire safety level when the buildings undergo any renovation or overhaul.

In addition to it, engineers also contributed in holding the campaign and training

sessions like fire drill of fire protection and prevention for the onsite worker or the

society in order to enhance the awareness toward the fire protection and also enhance

the fire response.

Lastly, engineers also contributed in post fire investigation as engineers have to work

out the cause of the fire incident such as the heavy industrial fire, chemical fire, and

explosion and so on. The analysis of the cause of the fire will be used to improve the

fire safety to prevent or minimize the damage of the similar incident.

3.0 Conclusion

4.0 ReferenceTeddy Roosevelt And The Fire That Saved The Forests. 2009. NPR Books.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114248029

The U.S. Fire Problem. 2011. National Fire Protection Association.

http://www.nfpa.org/research/fire-statistics/ the-us-fire-problem

Fire Dynamics. 2012. National Institute of Standards and Technology.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3yYU2t M0GK8J:

www.nfpa.org/~/media/files/member-access/member-sections/metro- chiefs

/2014-urban-fire- forum/firedynamicsmadrzykowski.pdf%3Fla%3Den+&cd

=1&hl=en&ct=clnk

Estimates of Thermal Conductivity for Unconditioned and Conditioned Materials

Used in Fire Fighters' Protective Clothing. 2015. US Fire Administration.

http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/fire05/PDF/f05100.pdf

The Causes of False Fire Alarms in Buildings. 2015. International Fire Protection

Magazine. http://ifpmag.mdmpublishing.com/causes-false-fire-alarms-

buildings/

Review of recent developments in fire detection technologies. 2003. National

Research Council of Canada. http://jfe.sagepub.com/content/13/2/129.abstract

Çetin, A. Enis, Kosmas Dimitropoulos, Benedict Gouverneur, Nikos Grammalidis,

Osman Günay, Y. Hakan Habiboǧlu, B. Uǧur Töreyin, and Steven Verstockt.

"Video fire detection–Review." Digital Signal Processing 23, no. 6 (2013):

1827-1843.

New fire extinguisher: Bass hum booms flames out. 2015. CNN

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/03/27/us/sound-fire-extinguisher/

Peer Evaluation by Yik Vui Kong

From my point of view, the performance of all presentation team was above

average. First of all, there was not much issue concerning the presentation slides. In

other words, students were able to utilise presentation slides as their visual

communication aid to support the most important part of the presentation. Most of the

teams could design the presentation slides in professional way. Slides were clear, not

overloaded with information, and filled with good quality diagrams. Therefore, it was

the presentation skill and content that made the differences among the presentation

teams. Some of them have excellent presentation skill either natural-born or with past

experience, however they did not manage to perform well due to several reasons like

lack of preparation, insufficient supporting details and did not comprehend well the

contents. On the other hand, portion of the students prepared enough supporting

evidences and facts, however their main problem was they were not able to maintain

interest from audiences throughout the presentation, and lack of confidence. The

following sections would discuss briefly about my opinions regarding the criteria of

both good and bad presenters, and the tangible and intangible experiences gained

from the series of team oral presentations.

Based on my observation, there were few good presenters who can speak

confidently and clearly without rambling. Nevertheless, their presentations were

forgettable and not inspiring. Among the good presenters, the best presenter that I

would like to prefer has done excellent presentation as he poses some good

characteristics that make him to deserve the absolute best. First, he managed to attract

the attention from the crowd due to his professional presentation attire. Most of the

male presenters’ presentation outfit were semi-formal and they did not wear ties

during presentation. He was the one among those few who put on the tie, and his tidy

and fresh outlook made me feel interested prior to his presentation. His presentation

partner was good in the front part of presentation, but was not that impressive. Indeed,

when it was his turn to take over the presentation, he spoke clearly, correctly,

distinctly and confidently. Unlike majority of the presenters who spoke fast due to

limited time provided, he was good in time management and able to present clear

explanation of his topic in a steady pace. Every statement was backed up with solid

evidence and fact to clarify the messages that he was trying to convey. His

presentation had logical flow and organised well. Apart from that, he presented with

appropriate and effective gesture, movement, vocal variety and eye contact. In the

end, he offered a conclusion by summarising all the mentioned statements in a clear

and concise manner. His instant reply to the queries from the floor showed that he had

well-prepared in the study of his topic.

In fact, there were also some presenters that were not performed so well in

their presentation. They presented different topics, however they shared similar bad

presenters’ criteria. Lack of preparation and practice prior to the presentation was the

common characteristics for bad presenters. The presenter just memorised the content

and did not prepare for questions. Whenever they forgot their script, they started to

ramble and said vocalised pauses like “ahh, umm and uhh”. Some of them even

stopped speaking for more than 10 seconds because they were trying to remember

their script. Besides that, some of the bad presenters brought notes on the small cards

which were used as a prompt to keep them on track. However, most of them kept

looking at their notes without having eye contact with the audiences. Bad

presentations were also given in a flat tone of voice without vocal variety (rate, pitch

and volume). Hence, they could not gain interest from the audience.

Throughout the series of team oral presentations, I have gained some valuable

experience. If I would like to have self-evaluation, I will say that I prepared and

performed well for the presentation from overall perspective. However, my biggest

weakness is fast speaking rate as I feel the intense obligation to share every piece of

information. From this presentation, I have realised that a good presentation should

avoid overloaded information as this might cause the audiences get tired easily. Use

of key words and phrases as well as include only important information are enough to

keep the audiences focused and interested. In addition, I have learnt to have more

interaction with the audience to maintain their interest. This could be done by

approaching audience seats area to make them to feel involved in the presentation, or

even asking questions and listening their response and feedback. Before presentation,

I practiced and rehearsed with my partner for several times. I was just focusing on

how to have a good presentation with smooth and logical flow. After the presentation,

I have understood that having good presentation skills and content are not enough to

impress audience. A good presentation must be able to benefit people via motivation.

Therefore, more efforts have to done to give a more inspiring, impressive

presentation.