Building the safety case
Professor Luke Bisby is a structural engineer who is working
to understand the impact of fires and elevated temperatures
on materials and large-scale building structures. His studies
strongly suggest that in many cases the current design
provisions concerning fire in buildings are not fit for purpose.
He and his colleagues are collecting the data necessary to
build models and develop design tools to improve that.
Research area
Luke Bisby is The Arup Professor
of Fire and Structures at the BRE
Centre for Fire Safety Engineering at
Edinburgh University. He graduated
originally in structural engineering and
his PhD research looked into the use of
advanced polymer composites as new
materials for strengthening reinforced
concrete in buildings. Part of this
research entailed investigation into the
fire performance of new materials and
the bond that fixes them to existing
structures. Fire research was only part
of his work at that early stage.
Professor Bisby said that the
terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers
on 11 September 2001 were not a
mainstream or typical fire event in
terms of structural engineering, but
that it rightly raised the subject of
structural performance in fire up the
research agenda at the same time.
His own postdoctoral research focused
on the issues raised, “As a structural
engineer, I was trying to figure out
if we could have – or should have –
prevented what happened, and how
structural engineers should think about
fire and design for different scenarios
as part of their duty of care.” With
his emphasis gradually moving away
from composite materials, and, keen
86
PECM Issue 16
to back his structural fire engineering
research with data from realistic tests,
he moved to the Edinburgh centre.
Here, he started working alongside
subject specialists in fire science
and engineering, and broadened
his research into real fire events
and analysing their effects on real
structures.
The fundamental aim of his research
is to be able to model fire in buildings
(and vice versa), and to be able to
derive and validate computer models
which can be applied to the structural
and fire safety design of buildings. The
models will look into various factors,
ie the dynamics of the fire itself, other
ignition sources, the effects of other
elements such as glazing and heat
transfer into the structure, all as a
dynamic transient event where the
heat generated by the fire affects the
respo nse of the building structure.
The work has profound implications
for international building design codes
and the ways that fire is treated in
structural engineering, and Professor
Bisby said that norms that have been
accepted for more than a century
are now being exposed as inefficient
or inadequate in some cases. As a
result, the top structural fire engineers
now operate in a design space where
the building codes are simply used
as tools within a performance-based
framework, rather than as static,
prescriptive requirements.
Academy support
Professor Bisby is currently supported
by an RAEng Research Chair. “The
Academy’s support has made a
fundamental difference to me
professionally”, he said. “More
Key achievements
Professor Bisby believes his research
will continue to achieve ‘slow but steady’
outcomes rather than headline-making
breakthroughs. He said, however, that
his work has planted seeds that are
fundamentally changing the perception
of how structural engineering is done
in the UK and elsewhere. This has been
initiated with the direct involvement
of The Ove Arup Foundation and Arup’s
Fire Engineering consultancy (former
and current co-sponsors respectively)
and through the continuing spread of
Edinburgh-trained engineers into the
profession worldwide.