Student Team Presents Research at International Conference

For their innovative research on safety and fire protection strategies for tall wood structures, three graduate students from The William States Lee College of Engineering were chosen to present their work at the 2018 Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) International Conference on Performance Based Codes and Fire Safety Design Methods in Honolulu, Hawaii, in April. SFPE is primarily a group of international industry professionals, and the UNC Charlotte students were the first-ever student team to present at the conference.

The multi-departmental UNC Charlotte project team members and their roles in the research were:

• Christina Saunders (Fire Protection Administration Masters student) Performance-Based Design, Fire Hazard Assessment of Green Building Initiatives, Architectural Design, Codes and Standards, Final Design Documentation, and LEED Sustainability Design
• Milad Shabanian (INES Ph.D. student) Structural Design, Fire Behavior of Steel Connections in CLT, and Architectural Design
• Babak Bahrani (INES Ph.D. student) Egress and Fire Design, Performance-Based Design

Faculty advisors included Dr. Nicole Braxtan of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Dr. Scott Rockwell and Dr. Aixi Zhou, both of Engineering Technology and Construction Management.

“This project truly required a multi-disciplinary approach with a broad knowledge base,” team member Christina Saunders said. “Milad provided depth to the structural and CLT elements of the design. Babak’s background in fire enabled him to provide the egress analysis, trial design evaluation, and the modeling for the case study. My background in engineering, fire, codes and standards, sustainability, testing, architecture, and general contracting provided the global vision necessary to coordinate a cohesive, successful outcome. The conference provided a link between academia and practitioners, and this relationship is certainly important for our work to be useful.”