Fire Safety

The topic of this special issue “Fire Safety” is in fact a strange name for a very relevant and interesting part of science in modern society. The primary goal of fire safety is not to save the fire, rather the opposite. Notice the word science: a couple of decades ago, research in the area of fire safety was concentrated on the experimental execution of fire tests in furnaces. A major step has been made since then. Fire safety nowadays, still includes fire testing, but also comprises advanced computation and fundamental research into e.g. fire spread and combustion processes. One of the pioneers in making these steps has been Leen Twilt.

Since Leen Twilt retired in 2005 from TNO Centre for Fire Research, an organizing committee composed of colleagues, decided to organise an international symposium on that occasion and requested the editorial board of HERON to release this special issue dedicated to fire safety engineering. The papers give an impression of the variety of fire safety issues Leen Twilt has been involved in.

The articles cover all aspects related to fire safety engineering; from the ignition of a fire, through the fire and smoke development, the human and structural response up to investigations after a fire. Moreover, the papers range from fundamental scientific research to more practice-oriented research. Also, the link between scientific results and international codes and standards is addressed. As a result, some of the papers deal with different topics than usually covered in HERON. This broad perspective is typical for the legacy Leen Twilt leaves and it attempts to show all aspects of the fire safety research theme in an integrated manner.

We herewith thank the editorial board to offer the HERON platform for dissemination of ripe and green findings in fire safety engineering, and last but not least, we extend our gratitude towards Leen Twilt, for being a most inspiring, motivated, intelligent and vigorous colleague and friend.

Guest editors: Joris Fellinger and Kees Both