Fire Laboratory

Fire behaviour and safety research often require experimental approaches to observe various fire phenomena

Our team has built a fire laboratory at our Creswick campus to safely investigate many aspects of combustion and fire behaviour. The facility currently contains a variety of experimental apparatuses and equipment covering a wide range of topics in ecology, wildfire and fire safety.

Variable Heat Flux Apparatus – a unique custom designed and built setup which allows us to study the ignition and combustion of materials under static and variable radiative heat flux up to 100 kW/m².

Non-combustibility Apparatus – Australian Standard 1530.1 is used to study combustibility of materials under specified conditions. It can be used to define the thermal behaviour of materials.

Flame Propagation Apparatus – Australian Standard 9239.1 is used to study the burning behaviour and spread of flames of horizontally mounted materials exposed to radiant heat flux in a test chamber.

IKA® C1 bomb calorimeter – used for calorific value determination of solid and liquid substances. Combined with the sample mass loss it allows to calculate the heat release rate, which is one of the measures of fire intensity.

Currently under design and construction!

Our large-scale combustion wind tunnel is a unique custom designed facility to test fire behaviour under extreme conditions. This 50 m long tunnel will have the capacity to generate firebrands and high wind speeds. Using this equipment, we will be able to simulate extreme conditions and investigate problems ranging from combustion to aerodynamics. 

Our research laboratory helps us to undertake pioneering research into ignitability and combustion of fuels and their influence on fire spread and intensity. It covers a wide range of fire topics, from wildfire behaviour, transition to Wildland-Urban interface areas to fire performance of structural materials. It is also used for teaching in a number of fire related subjects at both undergraduate and graduate levels. We are working on expanding this laboratory in the future.