This intensive 4-day course has been designed to introduce scientists and engineers to the fundamentals of fire behaviour.

The course starts with an introduction to fires and fire science covering ignition, fire growth, flames and their radiation, and flame reactions.

This is followed by a discussion of polymer decomposition mechanisms. Most unwanted fires are fuelled by natural or synthetic polymers, yet these cannot become fuels for flaming fires without decomposing from their long polymer chains into volatile gas phase fragments.

Techniques for understanding polymer decomposition, with and without flame retardants, are essential tools for flame retardant development. A discussion of the main techniques, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), TGA coupled with gas analysis, pyrolysis-GC-MS and rheology will be given. The first day finishes with a workshop on the interpretation of thermal analysis data.

Measurement of flammability covers the theory and principles behind the main fire test methods, making a distinction between regulatory tests, and scientific measurements which provide quantitative data on fire behaviour.

The workshop on interpretation of cone calorimeter data will give hands on experience, based on real cone calorimetric data, for interpreting experimental results with and without the presence of fire retardants.

Large scale fire tests. Objective truth in much of fire testing can be quite elusive as we rarely know about real fire incidents and therefore must rely on large-scale tests to generate useful data about fire behaviour in likely fire scenarios.

Fire safety regulations have driven the fire safety industry, but very often originate from historical accidents and disasters. Regulators have only rarely been proactive in responding to a fire threat before it results in tragedy.

Introduction to fire retardants covers the main types of fire retardants and explains the different mechanisms involved.

The workshop on the interpretation of fire retardant performance uses specific case studies to investigate how particular fire retardants work alone and in combination, and how in some cases they fail to work.

Polymers, fire retardants and sustainability addresses the environmental pressures on the industry which are currently driving changes in order to address environmental and climate problems.

Lessons from real fires gives examples of the kind of fire catastrophes which have led to new fire safety regulations.

Fire hazards includes the effects of heat, smoke, asphyxiant and irritant gasses together with the longer-term hazards from fire contamination such as exposure to carcinogens and particulates on the human population.

Acute fire toxicity measurement describes the main bench and large-scale methods for quantification of smoke and its toxicity.

The Grenfell Tower fire will look at the causative factors and the events occurring on 14th June, 2017 in London, from a material’s chemist perspective.