News in 2022
Shaorun Wins Thesis award from CFPA
Dec 2022
Dr Shaorun Lin’s PhD thesis, “Fundamental Study of Near-Limit Smouldering Fire Dynamics”, receives the 2022 Best Thesis Award from China Fire Protection Association (CFPA). Shaorun is one of the 12 awardees. This is the first time a PhD thesis from Hong Kong winning this award. Currently, Shaorun is a postdoc fellow at the University of California at Berkeley under the PolyU joint postdoc program.
Christmas & New Year Party 2022
Dec 2022
The Christmas-New Year Party 2022 was successfully held on 22 December 2022 at PolyU. Over 20 members of the Fire Lab gathered together to celebrate Christmas and the new year. With delicious food and drinks, the SFPE Hong Kong Student Chapter prepared mini-games and gifts for everybody. All participants had a wonderful experience and immensely enjoyed the event.
The joyful moments captured during the Party can be viewed at our Photo Gallery.
Can Deep Peat Fire Last for Weeks?
Dec 2022
Peatlands are becoming more vulnerable to smouldering fires, driven by climate change and human activities. We explored the persistent burning, propagation, and emission of the deep peat fire with lab experiments. We found that peat fire can burn in deep layers for weeks, but the burning mass loss is very small because of a limited oxygen supply and low smouldering temperature. This work is led by Yunzhu Qin and published (Open Access) in International Journal of Wildland fire. This paper was also presented at the International Conference on Forest Fire Research.
PolyU Fire Group Hosts SiF 2022
Dec 2022
The 12th International Conference on Structures in Fire (SiF 2022) is hosted by PolyU in Hong Kong from 30 Nov to 2 Dec. We received more than 200 paper submissions. After reviewing, 110 papers were accepted and presented at the conference online or in person. Over 40 international representatives came to HK and attended the conference in person. The conference also included a workshop for OpenSees for Fire. The conference was extremely successful. We thank the support from Croucher Foundation and HKIE and all volunteers.
Review paper on Tunnel Fire Evacuation
Dec 2022
The tunnel is a very confined environment, so people inside are particularly vulnerable to fire. Today, China owns the largest total length of tunnels in the world, so tunnel fire safety and emergency response are challenging. Our latest invited review paper summarizes the evacuation issues in tunnel fires generally and points out the unique issues in China. We also highlight the research advances and challenges of fire evacuation in tunnels. This work is led by Dr Yuxin Zhang and published in Fire Technology.
SiF Special Issue in Fire Technology
Dec 2022
After the 12th International Conference on Structures in Fire (SiF 2022) at HK PolyU, Fire Technology launches a special issue of SiF 2022. We aim to shortlist about 40 high-quality conference papers and invite authors to write full-length papers for this SiF2022 Special Issue. The guest editor team includes Dr Liming Jiang (co-chair of the conference) and Dr Xinyan Huang from PolyU, Dr Anwar Orabi from the University of Queensland, and Dr Chao Zhang from Wuhan University. Fire Technology (IF = 3.6) is an official journal of NFPA and SFPE.
NFPA Report for Dynamic Exit Sign
Dec 2022
As buildings egress layouts become more complex, technology advances, and building hazards requiring rapid egress extend beyond the fire, opportunities for dynamic exit signage is increasing. This report, titled “A Review of Dynamic Directional Exit Signage: Challenges & Perspectives” is sponsored by National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). We summarize the state of dynamic exit signage and the challenges and opportunities ahead. This report is led by Ho Yin Wong, whose PhD thesis is to combine AIoT technology with exit signages and develop an intelligent emergency exit system.
Webinar on Intelligent Wildland Firefighting
Dec 2022
Dr Xinyan Huang was invited by two books to write chapters about the latest development on smart firefighting. The first book chapter published by Springer, “Perspectives of Using Artificial Intelligence in Building Fire Safety”, reviews three applications of AI for building fire safety. The second book chapter published by CRC, “Smart Tunnel Fire Safety Management by Sensor Network and Artificial Intelligence”, which focuses on future tunnel fire safety. Both book chapters can be found online.
Flame Propagation inside PMMA Particle Bed
Dec 2022
Flame propagation in a packed bed of solid fuel particles is a well-known fire phenomenon, such as spontaneous combustion in piles of coal, biomass, and waste. We find a unique blue flame propagation inside the PMMA particle bed that does not burn out the fuel, and then we explore the quenching limits. This collaborative work with Prof. Jian Gao from CAS Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology is published in Combustion Science and Technology.
AI Tool for Building Fire Safety Design
Nov 2022
Fire modelling is a common practice in building fire safety analysis, but it is costly. This work develops an AI software, Intelligent Fire Engineering Tool (IFETool), to speed up the fire safety analysis and quickly identify design limits. We also provide the operation guidelines of IFETool for common design tasks of atrium fire safety. We are continuously updating this AI design tool to make it more intelligent. This work is led by Yanfu Zeng and published in Case Studies in Thermal Engineering.
Ho Yin Wins the EMSD Award
Nov 2022
Ho Yin and his start-up company GABES proposed an Alertech System (急中新智系統) that won the Champion and the Favourite Team Award in the “Smart @Gwin E&M IoT Application Challenge” organized by the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD), HKSAR Government. EMSD aims to use innovative IoT technologies to upgrade 8,000 government buildings, facilities and infrastructures, enhancing the life quality of the public.
New Method to Measure Peat Fire Emission
Nov 2022
Peat fires are the largest wildfires on Earth and a big source of greenhouse gas emissions. We develop a dual-gas optical sensor to detect the smouldering peat fire by monitoring transient CO2 and CH4 emissions with 0.1 s time resolution. We also found the characteristic CH4/CO2 ratio of peat fire is about 0.05. This work is in collaboration with Prof. Wei Ren from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and it has been published in Fuel.
Attending Int. Conf. on Forest Fire at Portugal
Nov 2022
Dr Xinyan Huang and PhD students Dayang, Yunzhu, and Yizhou attend the 9th International Conference on Forest Fire Research at Coimbra, Portugal, 11-8 November 2022. This conference is held every four years and is one of the world’s largest wildland fire conferences. This is also the first time that PolyU fire lab members have attended an international conference since Covid-19. Four talks related to peat fire, AI fire forecasting and digital twin technologies are presented at the conference.
Critical Event Library for Firefighting
Oct 2022
While occupants are evacuating from the fire scene, firefighters are entering life-threatening environments, exposed to hot and toxic fire smoke and risks of structural failures or collapses. To improve the safety of firemen, we proposed a smart firefighting framework that enables a super real-time forecast of future critical fire events, provides the information to firefighters in a language that they understand and improves operational efficiency and safety. This work is led by Aatif and is now published in International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.
Two Book Chapters on Smart Firefighting
Oct 2022
Dr Xinyan Huang was invited by two books to write chapters about the latest development on smart firefighting. The first book chapter published by Springer, “Perspectives of Using Artificial Intelligence in Building Fire Safety”, reviews three applications of AI for building fire safety. The second book chapter published by CRC, “Smart Tunnel Fire Safety Management by Sensor Network and Artificial Intelligence”, which focuses on future tunnel fire safety. Both book chapters can be found online.
Limiting Oxygen Index of Smouldering Revealed
Oct 2022
The standard test of Limiting Oxygen Index/Concentration (LOI/LOC) is widely used to determine material flammability. However, the LOI of smouldering fire is never explored. We propose a standard test to measure the LOI of smouldering under the forced oxidiser flow. It is surprising that smouldering peat fire can be maintained below 2% oxygen concentration, which is much lower than ~15% for a flame. This work is led by Yunzhu Qin and published in Combustion and Flame. This new test method is also patented (No. 202211154962.3)
Group Tour to Sotheby's Show
Oct 2022
It is a tradition of PolyU Fire Safety Lab to visit Art Gallery. This time we visited Sotheby’s Hong Kong Autumn Sales & Exhibition at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. The highlight in the show is the private collection of the late Sir Joseph Hotung, featuring hundreds of distinguished works spanning Chinese Art, English Furniture, Old Masters, Impressionist Paintings and more. Nevertheless, most members are more interested in these luxury watches.
Artificial-Intelligence Digital Fire (AID-Fire)
Oct 2022
The identification of building fire evolution in real-time is of great significance for firefighting, evacuation, and rescue. We proposed a novel framework of Artificial-Intelligence Digital Fire (AID-Fire) that can identify complex building fire information in real time. The system has four components: IoT sensor network, cloud server, AI Engine, and User Interface. In case of a fire, this system can provide valuable support for smart firefighting practices, thus paving the way for a fire-resilient smart city. This work is led by Tianhang Zhang and published in the Journal of Building Engineering.
Layer-to-Layer Battery Fire Spread in Low Pressure
Sep 2022
Low atmospheric pressure is a typical ambient condition for batteries in air transport. However, the understandings of thermal runaway propagation in open-circuit batteries at low pressure are still limited. Our latest work revealed that layer-to-layer thermal runaway propagation rate decreases with SOC decreasing, as low pressure can weaken both external flaming combustion and internal thermal runaway reactions. This work is led by Yanhui and published in the Journal of Energy Storage.
Minimum heat flux for wood to smoulder
Sep 2022
For most of the fuel, the minimum irradiation to pilot a flame is about 10-15 kW/m2. However, for smouldering ignition, the minimum irradiation could be only 5.5 kW/m2, providing a shortcut for fire incidents. Under low irradiation, a much longer heating duration is needed to create a smouldering front of about 3 cm. Otherwise, the smouldering ignition cannot be sustained without irradiation. This work is led by Dr Zhirong Liang and Dr Shaorun Lin and published in Fire and Materials.
Smouldering Direction Alters Emission Flammability
Sep 2022
Using smouldering combustion to process the waste is promising, but it will generate toxic and flammable gases. Nevertheless, forming a 2nd-stage self-sustained flame to process the emission makes the whole process clean. Our latest study found that the flame is easier to be sustained for the emission from the opposed smouldering process. Thus, the combination of opposed smouldering and flame is preferred for the waste processing. This work is led by Yuying Chen and published in Fuel Processing Technology.
Using AI and Image to Find Real-time Fire Power
Aug 2022
In the fire lab, we can measure the power of fire by the consumption of fuel or oxygen. However, there is no method to measure the power of a fire incident. We propose an AI-Image Fire Calorimetry to measure the real-time fire heat release rate. It uses the fire image and power from the NIST database to train the deep-learning model and then can calculate the power of any other fire. This tool can be installed as a mobile APP and in UAVs to help fire emergency response and decision-making, so it has great potential in future smart firefighting. This work is led by Zilong Wang and Tianhang Zhang and published in Proceedings of the Combustion Institute.
GNN Network to Predict Flashover
Aug 2022
Critical fire events like flashover have been the leading causes of firefighter deaths and injuries. This new work proposes a scene-agnostic model (FlashNet) to predict flashover based on limited heat detector temperature information. It adopts the graph convolutional neural networks (GNN) to effectively learn features from the limited temperature information and building structure variations to support firefighting. This work is in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and published in Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence.
Deep learning to Forecast the Transient Tunnel Fire
Aug 2022
Real fire changes with time and space rapidly, influenced by fuel distribution and wind. Most existing AI models can only identify the fixed fire location and size but cannot handle a transient fire. We propose a new AI model that is trained by massive transient tunnel fire (changing fire location and power). Then, this model can forecast the potential fire development with at least 30 s lead time. This work is led by Xiaoning Zhang and published in Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology.
New Members Join in PolyU Fire Safety Lab
Aug 2022
This autumn, we have a few new members. Big welcome!
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New PhD student: Yifei Ding (BEng from South China University of Technology) and Wai Kit Cheung (BEng from PolyU)
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New Research Assistant: Fuqiu Wang, Meng Wang, and Zonghao Xie
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Exchange student: Yichao Zhang from Inner Mongolia Agricultural University
Lab Demonstration for PolyU Alumni
Aug 2022
In celebration of the PolyU 85th Anniversary and to foster and strengthen the bond between the Faculty and its alumni, the Faculty of Construction and Environment hosted the first ever Alumni Reunion Day on campus on 13 August 2022. More than 200 participants attended the event. PolyU fire lab made a series of fire test demonstrations to our alumni, showing the latest research on smart firefighting. Ho Yin Wong and Tianhang Zhang are introducing the fire dynamics to visitors.
Peiyi Passed PhD Viva with a Rating of Excellent
Aug 2022
Peiyi successfully finished her PhD thesis defence on 15 August 2022 with a unanimous rating of “Excellence”. The thesis title is “Dripping Ignition Mechanism and Fire Risks of Thermoplastic Drips”. The chief supervisor is Dr Xinyan Huang. The external examiners are Prof. Kazunori Kuwana (Tokyo University of Science) and Dr Cristian Maluk (University of Queensland). The content of Peiyi’s thesis is now published in four journal papers in Combustion and Flame, Applied Thermal Engineering and Fire Safety Journal. Big congratulations to Dr Peiyi Sun.
Xinyan Visits University of Technology Sydney
Aug 2022
Dr Xinyan Huang received the Key Technology Partnerships Visiting Fellowship to be a visiting scholar at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in the Summer of 2022. The hosting professor is Dr Nic Surawski. Xinyan also gave a seminar about the latest clean smouldering waste processing technology. Currently, Yuying Chen is pursuing her dual PhD degree in UTS, and more research collaborations will be established in future.
Xinyan Visits University of Queensland Fire Group Aug 2022
As invited by Dr David Lange and Dr Vinny Gupta, Xinyan gave a talk, “Smart Firefighting Driven by Artificial Intelligence”, to the Fire Group at the University of Queensland. This talk introduces the latest research from PolyU SureFire Group. The full video can be found on the YouTube channel of UQ SFPE student chapter.
Xinyan Visits Australia Bushfire National Lab and ANU
Aug 2022
As invited by Dr Andrew Sullivan, Xinyan visited the Australia Bushfire National Lab in Canberra, one of the best wildland fire research labs, and saw the demonstration of fire spread experiments in the latest wind tunnel. Xinyan also visited the Australia National University (ANU) and gave a Seminar - Smouldering Wildfires in Peatlands: Challenges from the Earth’s Largest Fire. The presentation video can be found on the official YouTube channel of Fenner School of Environment & Society at ANU.
Xinyan attended 39th Combustion Symposium
July 2022
The 39th International Symposium on Combustion is finally held in a Face-to-Face model in Vancouver, Canada. This bi-annual event is the largest conference in the combustion area, attracting about 1000 attendees. Dr Xinyan Huang attended this symposium, probably as the only one who had flown from China, because of the travel restriction under Covid-19. Xinyan gave an oral presentation on the latest AI-Image Fire Calorimetry and another two posters on smouldering combustion and AI-driven forecast of backdraft.
What is the Shortest-Time Fire Spread Curve?
July 2022
Fire spread is a continuous piloted ignition of the unburnt fuel in the condensed phase. This study extends the conventional problem of the fastest fire spread to the shortest-time problem of the whole fire path. Two typical fuels, thin wires and thick PMMA bars, are chosen, and the transient and overall fire spread rates are measured. Multiple paths of different shapes are explored by fixing the overall fire-spread length and the same elevation of start and endpoints. This work is published in Scientific Reports.
Pressure Promotes or Limits Battery Fire Spread?
July 2022
With the extensive application of batteries in low-pressure scenarios, such as plateau, aircraft, and spacecraft, battery safety at low atmospheric pressure has been an emerging topic. Our recent experiments found that the thermal runaway propagation rate in parallel-connected battery modules would first increase and then decrease as ambient pressure decreased from 100 kPa to 0 kPa. The dual effect of ambient pressure and limits of thermal runaway propagation have been explained. This work is led by Yanhui and published in Applied Thermal Engineering.
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Modelling near-limit flame above smouldering wood
July 2022
Last year, we found an interesting near-limit blue flame sustained on the hot smouldering wood surface. This time, we further numerically simulate this near-limit flame. The solid phase smouldering is modelled by Gpyro, and the flame is modelled by Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) with the DNS solver. This work is led by Dr Shaorun Lin and published in Fire Technology.
Zilong won the SFPE Student Research Grant
July 2022
Zilong Wang (2nd year PhD student) wins the latest Student Research Grant from the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE), and there are only four awardees worldwide. SFPE will provide US$5,000 to Zilong for doing independent research on Smart Fire Calorimetry Driven by Image Analysis and Artificial Intelligence. Zilong is the 2nd awardee of this student grant in PolyU and Asia after Shaorun won the 1st one in 2021. Congratulations to Zilong!
Xinyan Visits UK Universities
July 2022
Dr Xinyan Huang made an academic visit to UK universities, including Imperial College, Kings’ College London (KCL), and the University of Edinburgh. New research collaborations have been established with Dr Francesco Restuccia on battery fire safety and artificial intelligence. Hosted by Dr Stephen Welch, Xinyan gave a talk about the latest development of the SureFire smart firefighting system to the fire research group at the University of Edinburgh.
SFPE HK Student Chapter Won the Gold Medal Again
July 2022
The SFPE HK Student Chapter was founded in late 2019, and it is the first student chapter in Asia. Since the winning of the Gold Medal in 2021, the chapter has won the Gold Medal again after organising many seminars/webinars and other extra-curriculum events over the late year. The current chapter president is Tianhang Zhang (2nd year PhD student). Congratulations to everyone!
What is the Flashpoint of Plastics?
June 2022
The melting and dripping of burning thermoplastics can cause a new ignition and form a plastic pool fire, resulting in a significant fire risk. This work investigates the burning dynamics of polyethylene (PE) vs polypropylene (PP) pools fully melted at 380–410 C on a hot plate with a controlled area and initial temperature. The flashpoint of the plastic pool can be defined when an intensive burning Pattern III occurs, that is, 310 C for PE and 260 C for PP. This work is led by Peiyi Sun and published in Applied Thermal Engineering.
Review Structure Fire Tests of Composite Floors
June 2022
The utilisation of composite floor systems in modern construction allows for building large floor areas with efficient use of material and labour. We first summarised the composite floors being studied. Then, theoretical design and analysis methods are discussed in light of the reviewed literature. Finally, this review coalesces the knowledge generated from the literature and lists the remaining challenges in the area, and set out a set of recommendations for designing composite floor systems for fire. This work is led by Dr Anwar Orabi and published in Fire Technology.
Smouldering + Flame = Clean Waste Removal
June 2022
We successfully apply a newly developed smouldering-based waste removal technology that can remove coffee waste, wood waste, and simulated sludge via using a flame to clean smouldering emissions. This work enriches strategies for the clean treatment of smouldering emissions and promotes an energy-efficient and environmentally friendly method for organic waste removal. This work is led by Yuying Chen and published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.
Gulzhan got Full PhD Scholarship from UPenn
May 2022
Our undergraduate student, Gulzhan Aldan, will continue her study as a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) with a full scholarship. Gulzhan got the BEng degree in Building Services Engineering with first-class honour at PolyU. Her final year project is on immersing cooling for battery thermal management and won the student award from the Hong Kong Institute of Engineers. Congratulations to Gulzhan!
How to Slow Down the Battery Fire Spread
Apr 2022
Mitigating thermal runaway propagation is of great significance to ensure the safe application of high-energy lithium-ion batteries. The recent work collaborated with the Guangzhou Institute of Industrial Technology has comprehensively investigated the characteristics of thermal runaway propagation in the large-format battery module and developed ultra-light firewalls to slow down the battery fire spread. This work is co-authored by Xinyan and Yanhui and published in Process Safety and Environmental Protection.
12th Int Conference on Structures in Fire
SiF 2022 @ PolyU Call for Papers
Apr 2022
The 12th International Conference on Structures in Fire (SiF 2022) will be hosted by PolyU in Hong Kong at 30 Nov - 2 Dec 2022. The conference is organised by the fire group at the Dept of Building Environment and Energy Engineering.
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Abstract Submission: 27 May 2022
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Abstract Results Announcement: 15 July 2022
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Full Paper Submission: 16 Oct 2022
PolyU Subject Ranking Keeps Increasing
Apr 2022
In the latest QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022, PolyU has attained remarkable results across different disciplines, reflecting our accomplishments in both education and research.
Our Dept. of Building Environment and Energy Engineering as well as Fire Safety Research Group mainly contribute to Architecture / Built Environment and Civil and Structural Engineering.
Tianhang elected as SFPE GCI Student Fellow
Apr 2022
Zhang Tianhang was elected as one of four Global Student Research Fellows of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) Grand Challenges Initiative. SFPE Grand Challenges Initiative aims to identify how fire safety science and engineering can contribute to addressing pressing challenges. Tianhang will be awarded USD 5,000 to conduct independent research in the area of Digitalization, Artificial Intelligence, & Cybersecurity.
Forecasting Flashover Using Deep Learning
Apr 2022
People trapped in fire and firefighters are facing unknow fire risks due to the lack of fire information. This work proposed a deep learning framework to predict temperature growth and flashover in real-time. We found that the deep learning model can predict the flashover occurrence with a 20 s lead time in a 1/5 scale model. This work is led by Tianhang Zhang in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) and published in Fire Safety Journal.
Microgravity Fire Spread over Ultra-thin PE Film
Mar 2022
The fire in microgravity spacecraft environment is a big safety concern, but the fire dynamics are difficult to study on Earth. This work explores the fire spread in ultra-thin PE film in a microgravity drop tower. We found that without fuel removal by dripping, the fire in microgravity could be more dangerous. This work is in collaboration with Institute of Mechanics, CAS and published in Microgravity Science and Technology.
Comparing building facade fire standard tests
Mar 2022
The building facade system is a key part of green buildings and carbon neutrality, but its fire safety is a global problem. Many large-scale facade fire standard tests are different from country to country, and their test results are difficult to compare. This unique numerical work explores the equivalent façade fire scenarios for different standard tests. By adjusting the total fire HRR, the matching fire intensity can be achieved without setup changes. This study, led by Yizhou Li and Zilong Wang, is published in Journal of Building Engineering.
Smart fire detection based on the alarm sound
Mar 2022
Nowadays the fire alarm system has been commonly installed inside buildings to produce an alarming sound in case of a fire. Such a stable and recognizable sound field inspires us if we can use it to monitor the fire development. This work was therefore carried out, which investigates using the pressure variation of the alarm sound to estimate the HRR variation of a room fire from ignition to extinction. In particular, only one microphone is required in the room for detecting the sound variation. This work is led by Dr Caiyi Xiong and published in Journal of Building Engineering.
Flammability Database of Historical Buildings
Feb 2022
Chinese historical buildings contain massive flammables like candles and incense burners and decorate rooms with various textiles, posing a significant fire hazard. This work forms a flammability database for common fuels used in Chinese Historical Buildings that lays a foundation to quantify their fire risk. This work is led by University of Science and Technology of China and published in Combustion Science and Technology.
Ventilation and Limitation of Kawagoe's Law
Feb 2022
Kawagoe’s Law is an essential correlation in compartment fire research, which defines the relationship between the ventilation factor and maximum fuel burning of the compartment. Although this law has been widely used, there is still a lack of numerical validation and knowledge on the limiting conditions of its application. This work performs a numerical study of a full-scale compartment fire to validate Kawagoe’s Law and explore the limiting conditions of applying Kawagoe’s Law. This work is led by Zilong Wang and published in Fire Technology.
Will concentrated sunlight ignite a fire?
Feb 2022
Concentrated sunlight is a potential ignition source of residential and wildland fires, but its ignition mechanism is still poorly understood. Our latest work cooperated with Prof. Gollner at University of California at Berkeley, and it demonstrated and quantified the smoldering ignition of tissue paper by a concentrated sunlight spot which is focused by a transparent glass sphere. This work is led by Siyan and Shaorun, and published in Fire Safety Journal.
How to sustain a flame above smoldering?
Jan 2022
Recently, smoldering combustion became an attractive method for organic waste removal. However, as smoldering is an incomplete combustion process, the pollutions from the smoldering emissions are significant concerns. Thus, this work puts forward a novel way to clean the toxic smoldering emissions via sustaining a flame on it and explores the critical conditions for sustaining such a stable flame above smoldering wood. It is found that the critical smoldering burning rate for maintaining a stable flame remains constant at 10-12 g/m2∙s. This work is led by Yuying Chen and published in Combustion Science and Technology.
Full-scale Fire Tests in the Underwater Tunnel
Jan 2022
Compared with normal tunnels, underwater tunnels tend to be longer, deeper, and more enclosed, increasing the difficulty of fire protection, evacuation, and smoke extraction, whereas related full-scale fire tests and knowledge are rare. A set of fire tests were conducted in a 1:1 full-scale Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge tunnel section model to study the smoke transportation characteristics in underwater tunnels with sidewall extraction. This work is in collaboration with the Sichuan Fire Research Institute and published in Tunnelling Underground Space Technology.