Semester 3 at Edinburgh and Pizza night!

Edinburgh is one of the most beautiful cities that I have encountered so far. There are plenty of places of historical significance to visit here. You will surely love Edinburgh for sure if you are a fan of antiquity. All our lectures were “in person” in King’s Building! If you are looking for accommodation, it is better if you get it in “Edinburgh old town”. You can use the following links for finding accommodation.

1. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/

2. https://www.gumtree.com/edinburgh

3. https://www.accommodationforstudents.com/edinburgh

4. https://www.unitestudents.com/edinburgh

The curriculum is more research-orientated

This semester we have 4 subjects:

1. Fire Science Laboratory:

This is the most practical-oriented course.  We performed lab experiments concerning pool fires, ignition of solids, determining the flash/fire point of liquid fuels, etc. The experiments were well organized and all safety measures were taken while performing the experiments. The main objective of the experiments was to determine the material behavior/reaction to fire and the interpretation of experimental results (% of uncertainty, how close are the experimental results with the literature values?).

• 

  Pool Fire Experiment

• 

  It looks like a brownie🤪 but it is PMMA subjected to 7 kW/m^2

2. Fire Science 5:

This course mainly deals with thermochemistry, flame spread, scaling of fire and the behavior of different flames (premixed/diffusional flames). In addition to the theoretical exam, we also have to write a report (1000 words) based on the series of Seminar conducted. The seminar was based on interesting topics like smoldering combustion, wildfires, fire modeling, timber behavior in case of fire, etc. Each seminar was conducted by researchers who are proficient in their respective fields, e.g the seminar on smoldering combustion was conducted by Prof. Jose Torero.

3. Finite Element Methods (FEM):

FEM is a numerical approach to solving a problem that exists in reality. For example in the case of a beam that is subjected to a series of loads, if we try to solve the problem theoretically to determine the displacement/slope at each node, we will have to solve complex matrices. However, with analysis software packages like ABAQUS/ANSYS, we can solve the problem within a few minutes along with good graphical representation. In this course, we were given a similar beam problem and we had to submit a report based on our software results.

4. Structural design for fire

In this course, we primarily used British Standards/Eurocodes to design structures. Topics such as loads acting on the structure, the effect of thermal stress on the structure, in case of compartment fires how the section factor affects the temperature/time curve, etc. There is no coursework in this subject unlike the other subjects, there will be a final written exam.

Pizza Night 🍕

It was very kind of Prof. Grunde that he wanted to meet all the IMFSE students before he started his job as Chairperson for the FRISSBE project in Slovenia. In the third week of October, Prof. Grunde invited the IMFSE students for a Pizza night. We shared our IMFSE experience so far. It was fun to hear Prof. Grunde’s student life when he was a student in the US/France. I was quite fascinated by Prof. Grunde’s interest in the game of chess! The event was very well organized, all of us thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Thank you so much Prof. Grunde for organizing this special get-together!

• 

• 

  Prof. Grunde with GM Vishwanathan Anand

A Taste of The Scottish Mountains

As someone with little prior knowledge about Scotland, I think this country is well-known for its picturesque mountainous sceneries. Naturally, as someone who likes to hike in Indonesia, I made a promise to myself to explore some of the mountains during my first semester here in Edinburgh. However, hiking could be considered a risky activity, especially when done in a foreign land without proper preparation, tools, and navigation skills. This became the main concern for me since the mountains are quite far from Edinburgh, and often unreachable by public transportation. One of the advantages of being a student at the University of Edinburgh is that there are so many clubs and societies, one of which is the Edinburgh University Hillwalking Club (or EUHWC), which became an important part of my first Scottish hiking experience.

The EUHWC organizes walking trips to the mountains all over Scotland, and all we got to do is become a member, buy the ticket to the trip, prepare ourselves (and any required personal gears), then go and enjoy the trip. The club will take care of (almost) everything, such as transportation, hostel (only for the weekend trips), and the routes of the hike. For beginners, no need to worry since the club provides various selections of hikes to go, so you may choose one that suits your condition without being afraid of getting overwhelmed by the difficulty.

In the middle of October, I managed to secure a place to go to the Crianlarich weekend trips, the first weekend trips that the club organizes in almost two years. That weekend, around 60 students left Edinburgh on Friday evening and went straight to the hostel in Crianlarich. Later, we gathered at the dining hall to meet our fellows and signed up for the Saturday walks.

Saturday : Ben More and Stob Binnein

I signed up for the Ben More and Stob Binnein walk, which is well known for the steep ascend and descend route yet offers short walking time compared to some of the other walks. FYI, Ben comes from the Gaelic language of “Beinn”, which means mountain and “Stob” means a small peak. That day, we were blessed with plenty of sunlight in exchange of the colder weather, so we still had to wear thick layers of clothes during the hike. My first impression of Ben More seems to agree with what people said that it was going to be a steep hike, and indeed it was.

In total, it took us about 2.5 hours of walking to reach the summit of Ben More, which sits at 1,174 m above sea level. During the walk, we stopped several times to catch our breath, take pictures, and eat some snacks along the way. We didn’t have to rush since the objective of the walk is to have fun while meeting new friends with the same hobby, not a race to the top. Words can’t describe how beautiful the scenery was, but I will put some pictures I took so that you’ll get a glimpse of the view!

• 

  Far far away from the summit

• 

  The view from our back

• 

  Steep Ascend to the Ben More’s Summit

• 

  Loch Lubhair shadowed by Ben More

• 

  Rocky patch just before the summit

• 

  Few minutes away from the summit

• 

  The EUHWC group at the summit of Ben More

• 

  Trig point which marked the summit of Ben More

Then, after taking a rest at the summit of Ben More we continued our journey to our last destination for the day, the Stob Binnein. Ben More and Stob Binnein form a twin-peak that people usually go to as a package. The descent from Ben More was also steep and immediately followed by yet another steep ascent to the summit of Stob Binnein. By the time when we were ascending the Stob Binnein, the weather also changed from clear skies to the usual gloomy & cloudy weather of Scotland. Fortunately, we got extra motivation because we’d have our lunch once we reached the summit. We managed to reach the summit of Stob Binnein by lunchtime, about 1.5 hours since we start our descend from Ben More.

• 

• 

• 

Lunch was finished and so we started our walk down. I thought that it would be easy to descend, but I was proven wrong. We had to walk through the boggy part of the mountain, where a lot of us (including me) slipped at some point. Our shoes were literally dirty and wet, but it was a good experience since I’ve never walked through the bog in my life before. In the end, we returned after 7 hours of walk, where we started at 8 am and finished at 3 pm. What about the view? Per usual, it was breath-taking and gorgeous. Take a peek below to see the view from our journey back.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Sunday : Ben Ledi

Yes, you’re reading it right, the journey didn’t end there. For weekend trips, we will have one walk on Saturday and Sunday. For the second day, I chose Ben Ledi, a smaller mountain in comparison to Ben More with less steep ascend and descend. The weather was cloudy with drizzles, and during our hike, we could see the fog covering the mountain.

Ben Ledi was an easier hike compared to the previous day, with well-defined rock steps and routes. But, that did not take the challenge away since the weather and our physical conditions wasn’t as well as yesterday. Once we hiked high enough, the visibility got reduced because of the fog that surround us. In a way, it helped us to not think about the summit and just focus on the actual walking, but we were also fooled several times because we thought that we reached the summit, while it was just what we call the “fake summit”. In the end, we reached the real summit after 2.5 hours of walk, and you can see a giant steel cross that acts as a memorial to Sgt. Harry Lawrie who was killed while on duty with the Killin Mountain Rescue team back then in 1987.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

After finishing our lunch, we walked down since the rain started to fall on us. Not much happened on the way back since we returned by the same route we went before. By the time we arrived at the car park, I felt that my knees were wobbly and close to giving up. In the end, my legs hurt for several days, but the views, experiences, and friends I met made it all worth it. If you’re into hiking, I’d recommend you to join the EUHWC and the trips that they organize!

Beyond the IMFSE

After more than a year in the IMFSE, I keep discovering that there are so much to learn in the fire safety engineering field. It’s a rather ‘young’ discipline and there are so much to learn beyond the courses we attend, the textbooks, the laboratory sessions, or the discussion out of classrooms.

I think therefore IMFSE also has a webinar series of IMFSE FSE Day. The kick-off webinar for this term was held last week, with timber building as the main topic in the talk. Led by Prof. Rory Hadden, and inviting Angus Law (The University of Edinburgh) and Danny Hopkin (OFR Consultants) as the speaker. Recently, I also picked up some fire safety-related podcasts that are very informative, intriguing, and to say the least; keep me up in the loop on what’s happening outside of the classroom.

The first one that I picked is the Fire Science Show. This show invites a diverse group of experts, from practitioners to researchers, and they have a talk with the host discussing different topics in fire safety. From EV battery fires, wildfires, risk assessment, to legislations and social aspects of fire safety. There are many familiar “guests” in this podcast, including Prof. Enrico Ronchi in one of the episodes that discussed evacuation modelling, and Kees Both who is teaching in the passive fire protection course at Ghent University.

There’s also an interesting podcast series from NFPA, with a wide range of topics too through an in-depth interview with the guests. And Assembly Point podcast, which has a similar setup of inviting people from the field to discuss different topics.

The next is BBC’s The Grenfell Tower Inquiry Podcast. The idea is to keep the public inquiry in the public eye, even after four years of the incident. I like that the podcast summarises and explains the technical evidence, in a way that can be understood by the general public. There are also episodes that feature familiar experts in the public inquiry, as the expert witness, such as Prof. Luke Bisby in episodes 19 and 96, and Prof. Jose Torero in episodes 95 and 172 (look at the numbers of episodes!).

Other than these podcasts, it’s also good to join SFPE, IFE, and EU Fire Safety Community as a student member to get more information about webinars and workshops.