Research Projects

Brandforsk has financed hundreds of projects over a 40 year time period and with our help, research and development within the field of fire protection science has made big advances.

Below you will find the most recent reports or you can search for older reports. Clicking on a project will take you to a new page where you will be able to download the report.

To search for previous reports choose from the options below.

NOTE! The search tool will also search for reports in swedish unless configured not to.

Year Publisher Author

Sparks from forestry machinery: A possible or impossible source of forest fires?

Sparks from the contact between metal and stone have been debated extensively in recent years, both in and outside the scientific sphere, especially in forestry due to the fact that many of the major forest fires in Sweden are considered to have started from forestry machines at work …

Sustainable management of construction waste, reuse of fire-rated Products

The building sector is very important for Sweden and the Swedish economy. The climate impact of the building sector in Sweden is close to 10 million ton CO2-equiv. per year …

Fire safety in cultural heritage

In Sweden we have many buildings that are valuable from a cultural-historical perspective and in many of them there are also culturally valuable objects …

Environmentally friendly flame retardants for cellulosebased materials – Focus cotton

Flame retardants are commonly used as a way to reduce the risk of fire. However, many of the currently used flame retardants are toxic and hazardous for the environment. Therefore, there are incentives to find safer alternatives. In nature, there are many substances that can function as non-toxic and environmentally friendly flame retardants …

Investigating machine learning for fire sciences – literature review and examples

In this work, a review of current literature on artificial intelligence (AI) and more specifically machine learning (ML) is presented. ML is illustrated by two case studies where artificial neural networks are used for regression analysis of 110 spalling experiments and 81 Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) models of tunnel fires …

Exposure of modern compartment fires to facades

Fire spread through façades is a key feature of many high-consequence fire incidents with exceptionally difficult suppression challenges, often involving unproportionate damages and high fatality risk. Unlike many other aspects of fire safety, the framework for assessing the façade performance is far from harmonized …

Home care and fire safety, from the home care service’s perspective

When the elderly live in so-called ordinary housing, ie. in their own homes and not in special homes, the building legislation presupposes that the people in the event of a fire can put themselves in safety. This insight has led to training initiatives and information campaigns in recent years often being directed at this group …

How many people die in smoking-related house fires, really?

Smoking has long been known as one of the dominant risk factors for dying in house fires and especially when combined with old age. Given that the number of elderly people is expected to increase significantly in the coming years, the number of fatalities can also be expected to increase …

Fire safety in timber buildings – Knowledge overview and research needs

Timber is a building material that in recent decades has evolved into new engineered timber products. This has allowed building construction to embrace the use of timber to a greater extent with new architectural possibilities together with the environmental benefits of using a natural and renewable material …

Fire Safety for an Ageing Population

Despite a large decline in the number of fatalities in Sweden since the 1950s, fire-related mortality is still a problem with around 100 deaths per year in fires …

Phase Changing Materials (PCM): Risks and Opportunities

There are different types of phase changing materials and it is mainly the organic materials that constitute a challenge from a fire safety perspective. Organic phase changing materials, paraffin being a commonly used material, are in general combustible …

Validation of a VR evacuation experiment – behavior, decision-making and eye movement (Eye-Track)

Virtual Reality (VR) is an increasingly popular tool to use for evacuation research. The benefits of this technique are several, for example, it is cost-efficient and gives the researcher a high level of control regarding the perceived environment in the experiments. The tool has shown to be promising in previous validation studies …