SCaFire
Fire dynamics of high-power electrical network and multi-scale smart risk evaluation model for new-energy buildings
Acronym: SCaFire
Programme: Polish-Chinese Programme SHENG 4
Contract No: UMO-2025/56/Q/ST8/00425
Project start date: 2.03.2026; project end date: -1.03.2029 (36 months)
Total value of the project: EUR 427,064
ITB’s budget: PLN 1 025 007,00 (EUR 236 364)
Coordinator on behalf of ITB: dr hab. inż. Wojciech Węgrzyński, prof. ITB, Principal Investigator
Coordinator on behalf of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Shenzhen Research Institute: prof. Xinyan Huang, Principal Investigator
Objectives:
Our ambition is to improve the fire safety and resilience of new-energy buildings. This goal will be achieved by revealing the fire phenomena in high-power electrical network, including cable, battery storage and PV fires in new energy systems and establishing a reliable computational model for multi-scale fires for various building environments.
Tasks:
WP1. Fire dynamics in new-energy buildings
WP2. Experimental research into new-energy fire dynamics
WP3. Building-scale fire dynamics and interactions with new energy systems
WP4. Smart multi-scale cable fire model in the building environment
WP5. Novel framework for fire risk evaluation in new-energy buildings
Short description:
New-energy building development is an emerging solution to address the rapid growth of energy demand and global climate change. These new-energy buildings introduce a means to generate, store and transport large amounts of energy, with the use of high-power cables to form a high-power electrical network that link the power generation system, energy storage system and grid system.
These novel solutions pose significant and unknown fire risks due to the complex fire behaviours. Unfortunately, the dynamics of new energy related fires inside residential, commercial and parking buildings and the interaction with fires in different energy systems are still unclear. Moreover, there is a lack of a reliable evaluation framework to design the fire protection system to handle cable fire and associated hazards in new-energy buildings or propose reliable mitigation strategies. From previous research focusing on the flammability of cables, we have recognised the challenges related to the complexity of indoor high-power electrical network.
Intermediate scale experiments performed primarily for the fire safety of Nuclear Power Plants revealed the interactions between cables in a bundle and the cable tray geometries, which add to the complexity of fire phenomena.
In this project, we aim to considerably improve the existing knowledge by determining the cable, battery and PV panels flammability across the scales, from the micro-scale (materials), through small- and intermediate-scale (cables and cable bundles) to full-scale fire development in compartments.
The proposed international collaborative research will first survey the usage of new energy building solutions and relevant fire events in high-power electrical network of new-energy buildings worldwide to reveal the fire risk. Then, multi-scale fire experiments of cable, cable trays and associated building energy systems will be conducted to bridge the gaps in the literature of the combustion process and fire dynamics.
A detailed database of cable fire behaviours will be built to calibrate the detailed numerical models. Afterwards, the artificial intelligence algorithm will be trained with the database to develop the surrogate model for cable fire in the full scale building fire and reveal the interaction between high-power cable fire and new-energy system components. Numerical simulations will be performed to reveal the consequences of cable fires in buildings.
Finally, a new scientific framework will be proposed to guide the cable fire risk assessment and overall fire safety design strategies for new energy building. The research outputs will deepen the scientific understanding of fire phenomena in high-power indoor electrical network, ensure the fire resilience of new-energy buildings, and promote China’s and Poland’s leadership in the safe application of new energy technologies and indoor high-power electrical network for sustainable civil engineering.
ABSTRACT FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC
We set ambitious goals for modern engineering – sustainability, net-zero energy consumption, promotion of environmentally friendly modes of transport. So far, we have a solid idea on how to answer these needs with distributed energy generation, storage and smart grid, in something we call new-energy buildings. Yet, we do not recognise that we introduce a completely new threat to buildings with these ground-breaking innovation – the high-power energy cable fires.
Fires of energy cables are a well-known source of risk in large industrial facilities, such as eg. Nuclear Power Plants, or large scientific infrastructure such as particle accelerators. In these buildings, numerous mitigation strategies are put in place, and personnel training for a case of fire is enforced. We do not treat this threat lightly, as the consequences of such fires are usually severe – both in terms of economic loss and the imminent threat from the smoke generated from the combustion of plastic-heavy cables.
However, in residential, commercial or parking buildings, we start to design similar electric infrastructure for megawatts of power that goes through corridors and open plan compartments. Instead of well-trained engineers, the occupants exposed are untrained civilians, unaware of the threat and unprepared for the escape. In our consortium, we have recognised this threat is significant, and this project aims to measure it and propose countermeasures. But to do this, we first need to understand the fundamentals of the combustion of cables…
Electrical cables are surprisingly complex products. Numerous bedding layers, sheeting and external envelope shield the metal cores (usually copper or aluminium). Each of the layers can be designed with different materials, having different flammability. Furthermore, one cable is rarely used alone – they are usually connected into bundles and distributed in the building on trays in vertical and horizontal arrangements. The combinations are endless and there does not exist a single model that could predict the cable sets' flammability. Similar issues emerge with relation to the batteries, energy storage or PV panels.
We first want to integrate the existing body of knowledge, and support it with a ground-breaking in scale experimental programme on flammability to solve this. We will test the new-energy system components across the scales – from the microscale (the material properties), through small and intermediate scale (cables and bundles) to full-scale compartment fires. We expect the amount of data generated by this project will be too big for any human to comprehend so that we will resort to deep learning AI to reveal the relations between the cable structure and flammability.
Once we have identified the relations, we will build a surrogate model of fires. This model will have simple geometry but a complex engine based on fundamental physics and our experiments' results. These models will be placed in numerical models of actual compartments to analyse cable fires' outcomes in residential and commercial environments. We will also perform full-scale fire experiments to confirm these findings and validate the models. Many of the experiments planned will be the first time in the world that someone has tried recreating such fires. We want to know how much of the toxic products and heat do the cables add to common fire scenarios. We also wish to find how often such fires can happen. If we know the probability and consequences, we can estimate the risk and rank the solutions from the safest to the worst.
We have built a strong consortium of the most experienced Polish and Chinese fire scientist of the field. We are confident that we can tackle the ambitious goals set for this project and enable the safe development of new-energy buildings. We hope that we can enable the green revolution in civil engineering while reducing the risk that so far may seem unforeseen.
