Fire Safety in Modern Timber Buildings

Dear Colleagues,

Recently, the construction industry has shown more interest in eco-responsible building materials and systems with a low environmental footprint, including wood products and bio-based materials. On the other hand, due to their combustibility, the use of these materials in buildings has traditionally been limited by numerous prescriptive provisions in building codes. The perception of the fire risk usually justifies these limitations due to a lack of knowledge, commercial considerations, or following historical conflagrations. With the change to performance-based design philosophy, most building codes now allow the demonstration of compliance using "alternative solutions". Fire safety engineering is a relatively new and emerging discipline that demonstrates the validity and conformity of performance-based design (alternative solutions). Approaches and methods used in fire safety engineering require knowledge of fire dynamics, fire safety concepts (fire resistance, reaction to fire, etc.), the life safety of occupants and firefighters, as well as the protection of neighboring buildings. Engineering approaches would also use numerical models, such as those using the finite element method (FEM) or computational fluid dynamics (CFD), among others. These models require quality input parameters that are verified and validated appropriately.

This Special Edition, “Fire Safety in Modern Timber Buildings”, aims to gather the latest advances in fire science and timber engineering to gain a holistic understanding of how innovative and/or emerging timber or bio-based systems or materials affect fire safety in buildings. Fire safety concepts such as reaction to fire, fire resistance of elements and connections, fire dynamics, thermal properties, and numerical modeling will be included. The outcomes from fire tests at all scales will also be examined, with the ultimate objective of disseminating science-based evidence to support fire safety engineering designs.

Dr. Christian Dagenais
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fire is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• fire safety engineering
• timber buildings
• fire resistance
• reaction to fire
• fire dynamics
• modeling