Stellenbosch University launches fire safety engineering courses and degrees

In South Africa almost every construction project requires a fire safety engineer. However, there are few tertiary institutions providing fire engineering training for professional design engineers in Africa. The consultants and practitioners developing fire safety engineering (FSE) solutions often are structural, mechanical or electrical engineers with limited university fire safety training. There is a need for formal training that can enhance the knowledge and expertise in local FSE.

In 2017 masters (MEng) and doctorate (PhD) degrees in fire safety were started at Stellenbosch University, hosted by the Department of Civil Engineering. Students from many engineering backgrounds (electrical, civil, mechanical, mechatronic, process and industrial) have now been involved in the programs. This exciting step hopes to upskill our continent and make the built environment a safer place.

Figure 3: World’s largest largest informal settlement fire experiment

(Photo credit: David Rush)

For the last five years the Fire Engineering Research Unit at Stellenbosch University (FireSUN) has also been short courses in fire safety engineering through making masters level courses available to the general public, as both face-to-face and online course (eg as shown in Figure 1). The next short course “Fundamentals of Fire Safety Engineering” will take place in Cape Town from 15 to 19 August. The intensive seminar has been designed for engineers, built environment and fire safety professionals on the fundamentals of fire safety. It is based on a new masters level course. The five-day CPD course content is specifically designed to cover a variety of topics relevant for fire safety design that cover the core competencies indicated by the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE), as shown in Figure 2. The content is accessible to practitioners from a variety of backgrounds, providing an understanding of fire safety principles, demonstrations and a visit to a fire testing laboratory. International experts Dr Noah Ryder (USA) and John Ivision (Canada) will be teaching much of the course, along with Prof Richard Walls, Dr Natalia Flores-Quiroz and Dr Antonio Cicione from South Africa.

Specific topics covered include:

• Introduction to fire safety

• Material characteristics in fire

• Passive protection

• Fire detection and communication systems

• Smoke management

• Suppression system

• Evacuation and human behaviour in fire

• Hazard and risk analysis

• Performance-based design (rational design)

For more information about the course visit https://bit.ly/3LL55XM

Figure 4: Furnace testing of ecobricks to understand what fire resistance can be achieved

The research topics at FireSUN are very diverse, including topics such as characterization of different materials and systems in fire, CFD modelling, risk assessment and code development. One of the focus areas of FireSUN has been fire safety in low-income settlements, which has included conducting the world’s largest informal settlement fire experiment as shown in Figure 3. Recently the team has also been working on understanding and reconstructing fires in refugee camps in Bangladesh. With regards to buildings, research is being conducted to understand mass timber structures, shipping container structures, and structures that incorporate waste materials. The latter has been done by conducting experiments to study fire behaviour and structural performance under fire conditions, models and simulations. Figure 4 shows results from the testing of ecobrick walls in fire, carried out by a masters student, Zara Sander. The team’s research has also focused on assessing risks that specifically affect South Africa such as the analysis of the plastic recycling industry, African grains and seeds and the wildland urban interface.

Despite being decades behind countries such the USA or the UK in terms of fire safety, South Africa is moving forward towards developing greater technical expertise in the fire safety field. To date the programme has had 12 PhD and 21 MEng students involved in the programmes, along with hundreds of engineers through the short courses offered. Students from Zambia, Kenya, Nigeria, India, Chile, Russia and Ethiopia have been trained through the work which is leading to increasing fire safety knowledge throughout the developing world.