Philip Thomas Medal of Excellence Awarded to Best Paper from the 12th IAFSS Symposium by White et al.

This image shows quenching of the same turbulent, methane line flame used in this study, but under oxygen dilution

The Philip Thomas Medal of Excellence has been awarded to James White, Salman Verma, Elizabeth Keller, Ailing Hao, Arnaud Trouve and Andre Marshall for their paper “Water Mist Suppression of a Turbulent Line Fire” which was presented at the 12thIAFSS Symposium in Lund, Sweden. The work included experiments in a canonical configuration to carefully characterize extinction of a turbulent line fire alongside simulations using FireFOAM.

The Philip Thomas Medal of Excellence is awarded to the author(s) of the best paper presented at a previous IAFSS Symposium. The award consists of a silver medal and a plaque for each author. The medal is cast from the reverse of a silver tetradrachma minted in Athens in 400 BC, at the time of Socrates and Plato. The central images are an olive spring, symbolising peace, and an owl, symbolizing wisdom. The international synergism of our Association is reflected in this Athenian design, suspended from a ribbon of Gosen white silk, presented in a medal box from the San Francisco mint.

The Philip Thomas Medal of Excellence will be presented at the 13thIAFSS Symposium in Waterloo, Canada in April 2020. IAFSS Members have free access to Fire Safety Journalafter logging in here. The article can be accessed here.

About Dr. Philip H Thomas

Dr. Thomas worked in fire safety research at the Fire Research Station (subsequently part of the Building Research Establishment) for over thirty years, from the early 1950s to the mid 1980s. In that time he published numerous Fire Research Notes and over thirty journal papers on fire phenomena, many of which are still regularly cited today. After retiring from the Fire Research Station in 1986 he remained active in fire research and continued to publish in Fire Safety Journal and elsewhere. The importance of his contributions to the field cannot be overstated. It was once said that he worked on almost every problem related to fire from spontaneous ignition, to wildland fires and from statistical analyses to fire modelling. He was a convener of TC 92 in ISO and W14 for the CIB. He was the founding Chair of IAFSS. He worked at a time when journal publications were not so numerous, but his writing mostly contained in Fire Research Notes show his prolific nature and his boundless interests. The new researcher to fire would be lacking not to have read the works of P. H. Thomas.