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Research Publications (Engineering and Built Environment)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://ir-dev.dut.ac.za/handle/10321/215

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Author: search.filters.author.Walker, MarkHas files: Yes

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    Assessing the safety of training firefighters with the minimum requirements for firefighter garments
    (Springer, 2021-03-23) Clark, Thomas B. B; Walker, Mark; Mendham, Frank
    Every year, high numbers of firefighters are injured at fire incidents. A primary cause of moderate to severe injury can be linked to the protective garments worn by firefighters and understanding the limits of these protective garments is crucial for their safety. It would be substantially advantageous to firefighter safety if their available safe escape time is included in building design. To do this, the heat protective performance of firefighter garments needs to be translated into a tenable time. In this study, the minimum Thermal Protective Performance (TPP) rating of firefighter garments was investigated and found to compare well to known firefighter environments. This TPP rating was then used to further process the heat flux results from a CFD based fire model to determine an available safe escape time for firefighters. The probability of firefighters being injured was required in this study. It was used to assess the accuracy of the fire model in estimating the critical heat flux required to prevent a safe available escape time.
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    A computational methodology to select the optimal material combination in laminated composite pressure vessels
    (2012-12) Tabakov, Pavel Y.; Walker, Mark
    A methodology to select the best material combination and optimally design laminated composite pres-sure vessels is described. The objective of the optimization is to maximize the critical internal pressure subject to cost constraints. Exact elasticity solutions are obtained using the stress function approach, where the stresses are determined taking into account the closed ends of the cylindrical shell. The approach used here allows us to analyze accurately multilayered pressure vessels with an arbitrary number of orthotropic layers of any thickness and a combination of different materials. The design optimization of the pressure vessel is accomplished using the Big Bang–Big Crunch algorithm,subject to the Tsai-Hill failure criterion.