The Fire Laboratory at the Division of Fire Safety Engineering at Lund University has a long history in fire science and it is of course connected to the education of fire protection engineers. We recently went through a refurbishment of the building, including the lab, and we are now up and running well at full speed again. The Fire Laboratory is primarily an educational lab and we run a total of fourteen lab classes spread over five different courses. We also have an extensive collaboration with the national fire academy at MSB Revinge, where we run a couple of the lab classes in larger settings. On top of this, we have a number of bachelor and master thesis projects every year.

The lab classes in our FSE program gives the students a deeper knowledge about fire behavior in materials and in rooms, as well as on sprinkler systems. These classes are supposed to complement and support seminars, lectures and assignments. The ambition is always to become better, to create better classes for the students and to give them the best possible education as we can in the fire laboratory.

Already during the first semester the students starts to look at flame height and they do some risk assessments of the lab, as part of their education. The third semester, they look at flame spread in different materials, flammability limits of propane and how to measure rate of heat release. After that, they move on to look at fire behavior in rooms. Finally, during their fifth semester they look at sprinkler systems and fire suppression with the use of gaseous systems.

Apart from the education, we also do research in the lab. Several of our doctoral students do experimental work during their thesis work and in many cases we have to build a special setup just for their experiments. In some cases, we also help the fire service and the police in their fire investigations. Creativity and ingenuity are the key components in our lab activities, and one is always to pay us a visit. Of course, you can also follow us on Facebook as well as on Twitter (look for @TheFireLaboratory or @TheFireLab).