Been thinking a lot lately. Exerting myself mentally. Not so much physically. But exercising my mind daily is what I love. If it was this “easy” to exercise physically, well, I would be in well shape. But something drives me to work on projects. Some meaningful, some just practicing and moving my brain cells along the line.

So, this is nothing other than an updating type of post, a snapshot of where my neurons are firing.

1) Been actually practicing typing and using Python everyday. Did you know that the language Python was named after Monty Python’s Flying Circus? Neither did I until finally doing the official tutorial. Why am I practicing typing? I have been using computers since I was about 5, and still I cannot proper type. Sort of embarrassing. Not that though. I just want to type about thinking about typing. This post was written without proper typing. I have finally completed the typing tutor deal on my laptop. And now just need the practice part. I can type at 90+ WPM with this improper style, but the memory obstacle is still there.

That moves me on to Python. Why am I learning yet another language? Well, let me clarify. I am not the master of any one language. Python just seems so sensible to me. Good language to finally master. It comes on every Mac and Linux install. It can do all of my automation tasks that I dearly not need waste time on. Filling out FDS files based on numbers in a CSV file. Searching through PDF files for a server. Or making a post-processor for FDS output files. I love the direct-ness of the language. To print something is “print ‘hello world”. And that’s it. No braces, no output specifiers, no weird containing characters, no declarations, and so on.

2) Finished the Four-Hour Work Week. Amazing book. It is the first book that I am going to buy ever since giving away a huge percentage of my books about six months ago. I am now tasked with actually making something tangible that the rest of the world can use (and will pay for). The book is not just a business book, but a book about lifestyle, travel, and the philosophy of modern culture.

I now have to think about what I can provide to benefit masses of people. Perhaps the biggest thinking outside experiment that I have ever done. This can be difficult for my idealistic mind, but is totally possible. Since I retired in the month of August in 2006, this is certainly a key element in keeping myself financially supported - but avoiding the traps of an 80-hour per week self business. I do hope to develop my website with more FDS videos and info. This website or another, I am not sure. Hobby or “business”, I am not yet sure. Time and experiences will tell.

3) Travel. Need more travel and exploring. The above points will actually help with this in my abstract mind.

4) Graduate school politics. My fire science hero has a terrible relationship with my future grad. school advisor, department, and school. Yay. All I want is meaningful work, and I hope that they all understand that. To think that my next two years of work might be thrown away is 1000x times worse than saying I would never be paid for the work. I will do my best, as always. My future advisor posed the question of why should an entity contribute to an open-source worldwide project who did not fund them directly. Why should he post the “results” for free. This violated one of my primary values in life. I immediately thought of Linux, KDE, Google, and tons of other open source projects that were not directly funded by those agencies themselves but have benefited the lives of millions based on contributed work.

Hell, I have been contributing to the FDS project for “free” for the past three years in whatever way that I can, every single day. I would do it for free - because it is one project of many in the world that is meaningful and benefits the world. It even has the bonus of saving lives through better fire protection design. So, I took that comment with a hard heart and looked back on the past 2 years as I have been earning a McDonald’s salary to teach, research, and contribute to a meaningful project. Priorities.

To leave on a good note, as I should, I have emailed several contacts around the US and the world about future travel and research opportunities. We will see what happens! Have a fantastic week.

On Tuesday, I travelled to the outskirts of San Antonio: Schertz, TX, to be exact. There was held an SFPE event upon which smoke control testing was to be demonstrated. Attending something like this is worth a million words. I never knew much about smoke control systems, but now, I was able to see them in action.

The researchers in jump suits heated up smoke candles to produce over 100,000 cubic feet of smoke in order to form an upper smoke layer in the newly-built 350,000 square foot furniture warehouse. Three minutes of smoke-filling, then the vents are activated. The vents serve a primary purpose of controlling fire spread by removing superheated gases from the warehouse in the event of a fire. They also serve to clear the warehouse of smoke to help with tactical firefighting operations.

Enjoy:

Here are some models that I have been working on for this semester. They are done in Fire Dynamics Simulator. [Click on a picture for a larger version.]

The first set is a small section of the King’s Cross fire which occurred in a London Underground station in 1987 and killed 31 people. The flames were said to have been traveling sideways because of the trench effect that the escalator tunnel gave way to. Many people went up a parallel escalator and were later killed in the ticketing room where the hot gases were collecting from the escalator like a chimney.

Early stages of the fire in which the wooden treads are catching from the fire underneath:

View of surface temperatures within the escalator shaft. The concrete ceiling reaches temperatures of 700 degrees Celsius after a few minutes of the fire growth stage in our model.

The gas temperature represented by different colors. The gas temperature is about 1500 degrees C after a few minutes in the model:

Two views which show 1) the velocity field within the shaft 2) the trench effect on the flames and fire spread 3) the smoke layer within the shaft 4) and the plume trajectory in the shaft

This is another model which is being used to teach a class in structural fire safety. It is an arena model and shows how readily a fire will develop in an unprotected large room with no fire protection and a large fuel load. The layout is similar to churches as well, many of which are grandfathered into the modern times and exempted from installing fire protection such as sprinklers or evacuation alert systems.

The fire spreads from a source in the corner. The smoke spreads quickly and serves as a medium to heat the roof and structural elements. The energy from the seats flows upwards and feeds the spread throughout the roof, while the radiant energy comes back down to continue the cyclic destruction of the building’s elements:

Outside view of the arena with an angle wood roof and glass atrium at the peak:

View of surface temperatures inside of the arena:

I hope that you enjoyed today’s lesson and learned something from me sharing my current progress in fire modeling for the semester. Enjoy!