TVSFPE,
TVSFPE will be meeting Thursday (2/5/2026) at Mimi's Café in Turkey Creek: https://www.mimiscafe.com/locations/knoxville/
The meeting will be from 6pm to 8pm. The SFPE Foundation will start by providing a brief update. The speaker is Andrea Franchini, PhD. He will be presenting on:
"Optimizing the inherent fire capacity of structures by rethinking the design workflow".
Description: Performance-based fire safety design generally follows conventional structural engineering workflows, which begin by defining a set of hazard scenarios. Next, they involve structural response analysis to estimate hazard consequences in terms of damage or loss metrics of interest. These metrics are eventually appraised to determine whether the performance objectives are achieved or design iterations are needed. However, such a workflow is not optimal for fire safety design. Indeed, the strong coupling between the fire phenomenon and structural features enables an ad-hoc design variable selection (and optimization) to reduce fire intensity. Building upon these ideas, the presentation i) illustrates the advantages of treating fire scenarios as output design variables through an approach named Consequence-oriented Fire intensity Optimization (CFO); ii) shows how the CFO approach can optimize the trade-off between implementing passive fire protection and enhancing a structure’s “inherent fire capacity,” defined as its ability to retain integrity/functionality without additional fire safety measures; iii) demonstrates these concepts through the fire safety design of a steel girder bridge.
Speaker Introduction:
Andrea Franchini is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Structural Fire Engineering Team at Ghent University (Belgium). His research focuses on probabilistic performance-based analysis, design, and optimisation of structures exposed to extreme hazards, with particular emphasis on fire, as well as on optimal experimental design under uncertainty. He holds a PhD from University College London (UK) and a double MSc in Structural Engineering from the University of Trento (Italy) and Tongji University (China). His project titled “A Novel Risk-Based Fire Design Method for Sustainable Structures” received a Student Research Grant from the SFPE Foundation within the May 2022 Grant Cycle.
Andrea Franchini is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Structural Fire Engineering Team at Ghent University (Belgium). His research focuses on probabilistic performance-based analysis, design, and optimisation of structures exposed to extreme hazards, with particular emphasis on fire, as well as on optimal experimental design under uncertainty. He holds a PhD from University College London (UK) and a double MSc in Structural Engineering from the University of Trento (Italy) and Tongji University (China). His project titled “A Novel Risk-Based Fire Design Method for Sustainable Structures” received a Student Research Grant from the SFPE Foundation within the May 2022 Grant Cycle.
A social hour will be held between 5pm and 6pm.
Please note that Mimi's Cafe' has food, and is located at 10945 Parkside Dr. Knoxville, TN 37934
Previous Meeting Minutes will be attached below.
Thank you,
Channing Walmsley
TVSFPE Secretary
Cell: 865-320-7091
Office: 865-241-5755
http://www.tvsfpe.org/
