Opportunities

Supervisor: Vojtěch Šálek
Advisor: Lucie Hasalová

Annotation: Charred residues formed during solid thermal decomposition strongly influence the course of fire spread. For wood-based materials, the char layer serves as an effective thermal barrier that substantially reduces heat transfer to the underlying material, thereby significantly slowing the progression of further thermal degradation and combustion. To account for the influence od char residue in advanced mathematical models of fire, its thermal properties are required. However, these residues are typically porous and fragile materials, making the determination of their properties particularly challenging.

The aim of this thesis is to apply photogrammetry to determine the bulk density of residues produced by the combustion of various wood-based panel materials. Photogrammetry is a technique that enables three-dimensional reconstruction of object geometry using photographs or video recordings captured from multiple angles.

As part of the project, the student will become familiar with photogrammetric methods and software tools used for 3D object reconstruction. The work will also include an assessment of measurement accuracy.

Experimental investigations will be carried out on samples differing in material type, different charring histories and environments, and sampling location within the tested specimens.

Related video: A short introduction to photogrammetry presented by our students at the Night of Scientists (Noc vědců): https://www.nocvedy.cz/archiv/udalost/2745-mereni-objemu-pomoci-fotografie-a-jeho-vyuziti-v-pozarnich-prumyslu.

Supervisor: Vojtěch Šálek
Advisor: Milan Jahoda

Annotation: Wood-based materials are widely used in construction and building interiors due to their favourable mechanical properties, availability, and renewability. However, their combustible nature may significantly contribute to fire development. Modern fire models are capable of predicting fire growth as well as the thermal response of materials and structures, but their accuracy depends on the availability of reliable material properties. One of the key input parameters is thermal conductivity, which may vary considerably with temperature.

This thesis focuses on reviewing the available data on the thermal conductivity of wood-based materials and the methods used for its determination. The thermal conductivity of selected materials will be experimentally measured over the widest possible temperature range using the Transient Hot Bridge (THB) method. The measured values will be compared with data reported in the literature and evaluated with respect to their use as input parameters for fire modelling.

Supervisor: Milan Jahoda
Advisor: Lucie Hasalová

Annotation:  Knowledge of flame temperature is essential for assessing the impact of fire on its immediate surroundings, such as the design of fire protection systems, fire spread prediction, and the safety of firefighters during emergency response. However, determining flame temperature using commonly employed thermocouples is far from straightforward, as a thermocouple measures the temperature of its sensing junction rather than the actual gas temperature.

Supervisor: Milan Jahoda
Advisor: Lucie Hasalová

Annotation:  Knowledge of the radiant heat flux emitted by flames and acting on surrounding objects is of great importance in fire safety engineering. Measurements are typically performed using commercial heat flux sensors, which are relatively expensive and therefore often used only to a limited extent during fire testing.

Supervisor: Milan Jahoda
Advisor: 

Annotation: The development of hydrogen mobility is not possible without a well-established understanding of fire safety. The fire safety aspects of hydrogen use in energy systems and transportation have been described relatively well in the scientific literature from a theoretical perspective. Nevertheless, several important questions remain unanswered. One of these concerns the characterization of the time-dependent discharge of hydrogen from a pressurized storage vessel through a pressure relief device when it is activated, for example due to elevated ambient temperatures caused by a vehicle fire. It is known that hydrogen, unlike compressed natural gas (CNG), does not cool significantly during expansion and release. Gas discharge can be modeled using approaches ranging from simple analytical outflow models to advanced three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations.

Supervisor: Vojtěch Šálek
Advisor: Lucie Hasalová

Annotation: Wood-based materials are widely used in building interiors, such as offices and laboratories, where they may significantly contribute to fire growth and fire spread. Numerical fire models can be used to predict the fire behaviour of office furniture assemblies; however, their accuracy depends on the quality of the input material data and the approach used to model the thermal decomposition of solid materials. The recently introduced Scaling Pyrolysis (SPyro) approach enables the use of experimental data obtained from bench-scale tests (cone calorimetry) to determine pyrolysis parameters for fire simulations.

This thesis focuses on the analysis of experimental dataset from large-scale fire tests of furniture assemblies conducted in a Room Corner Test apparatus. Based on experimental data obtained using a cone calorimeter, a fire model employing the Scaling Pyrolysis approach will be developed in the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS). The objective of the thesis is to evaluate the ability of this approach to predict fire spread and the heat release rate during a full-scale furniture assembly fire.

Supervisor: Vojtěch Šálek
Advisor: Jiří Ira, Milan Jahoda

Annotation: The rate of thermal decomposition of solid materials is a governing process in predicting fire spread within advanced fire models. This rate is commonly described using Arrhenius-type kinetics; however, for chemically complex materials such as wood, it is impossible to explicitly represent the hundreds of decomposition reactions that occur simultaneously. Therefore, an engineering approach is required to identify an appropriate simplified decomposition scheme together with the corresponding optimal kinetic parameters. These parameters must be determined in such a way that the model accurately reproduces the mass-loss behavior observed in experimental measurements.

The aim of this project is to develop an open-source desktop application with a graphical user interface (GUI) for the Windows operating system. The application serves for processing experimental thermogravimetric data with the aim of calculating the kinetics parameters of thermal decomposition. The application will implement: reading and smoothing of experimental datasets; the K–K method for estimating the number of decomposition reactions; choice of various decomposition reaction schemes; and optimization routine to obtain kinetic parameters.

Supervisor: Vojtěch Šálek
Advisor: Lucie Hasalová

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Supervisor: Vojtěch Šálek
Advisor: Milan Jahoda

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Supervisor: Milan Jahoda
Advisor: Vojtěch Šálek

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Supervisor: Vojtěch Šálek
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Supervisor: Milan Jahoda
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