Numerical and experimental study of atrium enclosure fires in a full scale fire test facility. Póster

For the present work, a 3-D numerical model has been implemented to simulate the thermal and fluid fields induced by an enclosure fire in an atrium and for smoke exhaust system assessment. This study is focused on the ‘Fire Atrium’, a new full-scale fire test facility of the Technological Metal Centre in Murcia, Spain. It is an aluminium prismatic squared base building of 19.5 m x 19.5 m x 20 m with several vents arranged in its walls and four exhaust fans at the roof

El proceso de constitución de España en una sociedad turística

El turismo extranjero fue uno de los factores que más incidieron en la peculiar constitución de España como sociedad de consumo. El «éxodo rural», el rápido proceso de urbanización, la industrialización y, posteriormente, la terciarización de la economía y la incorporación a la UE han sido varias de las claves que explican uno de los procesos de transformación más importantes sucedidos en la historia del país. Sin embargo, el comportamiento turístico de los españoles sigue aún teniendo peculiaridades que le distinguen de los turistas de los países de su entorno. A través del estudio de los datos ofrecidos por las distintas fuentes estadísticas oficiales, el artículo analiza el proceso de constitución de España en sociedad turística.Foreign tourism was one of the leading factors contributing to the transformation of Spain in a consumersociety. Rural migrations, urbanization, industrialization and, later, the creation of a service economy and membership in the European Union explain one of the most momentous processes of change in the history of the country. Tourism behavior among Spaniards, however, still follows some patterns that separate it from that of tourists in nearby countries. Following official statistical data, this paperstudies the transformation of Spain in a tourist society

La relevancia de los tiempos en la atención médica al estatus epiléptico y su impacto sociosanitario: educación en salud y evaluación funcional del paciente con epilepsia

Se estima que entre el 1% y el 1,5% de la población mundial padece epilepsia, un trastorno cerebral caracterizado por una predisposición permanente a padecer crisis epilépticas y por las consecuencias neurobiológicas, cognitivas y psicosociales que conlleva. El estatus epiléptico es una forma de presentación de la epilepsia que consiste en la aparición de una crisis epiléptica que se prolonga en el tiempo, o bien de dos o más crisis epilépticas sin total recuperación del paciente entre ellas. El punto temporal a partir del cual una crisis epiléptica anormalmente prolongada se considera estatus epiléptico se ha ido acortando en las últimas décadas. La Liga Internacional Contra la Epilepsia inicialmente lo fijó en 30 minutos, pero más recientemente lo acotó a 5 minutos, pues cada vez son más las evidencias de que las crisis epilépticas prolongadas son más resistentes al tratamiento y tienen un peor pronóstico. No obstante, se necesitan más investigaciones para establecer la relación precisa entre ambas variables..

Smoke and fire dynamics in atria and large enclosures: An overview

The proliferation of atria within modern large buildings is relatively recent. An atrium can be defined as a large open space connecting two or more storeys. Atria are important architectonical features since the 60's and can be found, among others, in shopping centres, office buildings and high-rise buildings, airports, stations and sports centres. However, the atrium represents an innovative, complex and non conventional architectonical element that can lead to fire environments diverging significantly from those in conventional compartments used in the development of current codes and standards. They are a source of discussion in the fire safety community because smoke can easily spread from one floor to another making the traditional methodologies for compartmentation of little or null effect. The design of smoke management in atria has been based on prescriptive codes since the 70's. It was not until the mid 80's that the phenomena started to be the objective of both experimental and numerical studies. It is because of the subsequent improved understanding on fire dynamics and smoke management together with the increased computing power available nowadays, that there is a progressive movement from prescriptive-based to performance-based codes which is also chaning the way atria are designed. The aim of the present work is to provide a broad overview of the current state-of-the-art of fires in atria. A brief introduction to the characteristics and types of atrium structures is presented first. Then, a description of the fire dynamics as well as the main safety problems that arise in case of fire are considered. A historical discussion of the research, including experimental and numerical studies, is presented, and current design methodologies and fire safety strategies are discussed. The final part of the overview addresses the international tendencies towards the introduction of performance-based fire protection codes. This overview highlights the need for further experimental studies and validations of numerical simulations for a wider range of fire conditions. © 2010 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Low and medium power full-scale atrium fire tests and numerical validation of FDS

The inclusion of atria within modern large buildings is relative recent. These structures are important architectonical features since the 60’s. Atria are a source of discussion within the fire science community. They introduce complex designs and non conventional architectonical elements that can lead to fire environments diverging from those in current codes. Because of this, the current trend in fire safety in atria is towards performance based design. At this point, it is still necessary to improve and validate the existing numerical models. For this aim, some tests were carried out at the Murcia Fire Facility. These consist of 19 full-scale fire tests that provide with new experimental data of atrium fires. The fire size, the smoke extraction rate and make-up openings size and location were varied. At the present paper, a set of results from some of these experiments in a 20 m cubic facility are reported and discussed. Additionally, comparisons with the predicted results from Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) v.4 are also presented. FDS has turned out to be capable to predict the transient fire-induced conditions inside the facility accurately, above all at the upper parts. The predicted smoke layer descent has been also compared with the experimental one with good agreement.The authors want to acknowledge the Centro Tecnológico del Metal of Murcia for the use of their test rig, the Professor J. L. Torero, T. Steinhaus, C.Abecassis-Empis, P. Reszka, W. Jahn, from the University of Edinburgh, for their technical suggestions and supervision. Simulations have been carried out at the computational facilities of the Technological Research Services of the Technical University of Cartagena (SAIT) and the University of Jaen. This work has been supported by Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia of Spain (Projects CT/G30572473, and FIT-020700-2004-25 and grant TRA2006-15015) and by the Junta de Andalucía of Spain (Project number P07-TEP-02693)

On the Fluid Dynamics of the Make-Up Inlet Air and the Prediction of Anomalous Fire Dynamics in a Large-Scale Facility

The present paper is focused on the fluid dynamics of the make-up air at the vents in case of an atrium fire, its influence on the fire-induced conditions and the necessity of properly model it to obtain an accurate numerical prediction. For this aim, experimental data from two full-scale atrium fire tests conducted in a 20 m cubic facility, with venting conditions involving mechanical smoke exhaust and make-up air velocities larger than 1 m/s, and with different fire powers, are presented. Subsequent numerical simulations of these tests have been performed with the code Fire Dynamics Simulator v5.5.3. Two different approaches have been followed to simulate the make-up air inlet fluid dynamics, involving one domain which only considers the inside of the building and another which includes part of the outside. In the former simulations, anomalous phenomena around the fire appear, while the inclusion of the exterior domain provides with a completely different fluid dynamics inside the facility which agrees better with the experimental data. A detailed analysis of the fluid mechanics at the air inlet vents is conducted to explain these discrepancies. Finally, further simulations are performed varying the make-up area to assess the appearance of the aforementioned phenomenon.This research was supported by the Spanish MCyT and Junta de Andalucia under Projects # DPI2008-06624-C03-02 and # P07-TEP02693, respectively. CGM wants to acknowledge the research stay grants IAC-2010-3 and A-13-2010 from the Junta de Andalucia and the University of Jaén, respectivel

Los españoles más viajeros

A partir de una explotación específica de los datos aportados por la encuesta que en mayor medida recoge las actividades y movimientos turísticos de los españoles, Familitur (dirigida por el Instituto de Estudios Turísticos), se analiza el comportamiento de aquellos españoles que registran una mayor frecuencia de viajes a lo largo del año. La perspectiva de tal aproximación es inicialmente descriptiva: conocer hasta qué punto configuran un perfil social diferenciado o realizan otro tipo de viajes. Es decir, hasta qué punto se diferencian de los otros españoles, más allá de la diferencia que les singulariza como más viajeros. Pero también se intenta, con los límites derivados de las características de los datos obtenidos, avanzar explicaciones sobre tal diferenciaciónFrom a specific exploitation of the data contributed by the survey that in greater measure collects the activities and tourist movements of the Spaniards, Familitur (directed by the Instituto de Estudios Turísticos), the behavior of those Spaniards that register a greater frequency of trips along the year is analyzed. The perspective of such approximation is initially descriptive: to know up to what point they configure a social profile differentiated or they carry out another type of trips. That is to say, up to what point they are differentiated of the other Spaniards, beyond the difference that individualizes them as more travelers. But also it tries, with the limits of the characteristics of the data obtained, to advance explanations on such differentiatio

Identification and Visualization of the Conceptual Structure and Main Research Themes of Studies in Informatics and Control Journal from 2008 to 2019

Studies in Informatics and Control journal is a quarterly publication for all those involved in the field of Information Technology (IT). Studies in Informatics and Control journal provides important perspectives on topics relevant to IT, with an emphasis on useful applications in the most important areas of IT, and it is aimed at advanced practitioners and researchers in the field of IT. The core subjects covered by Studies in Informatics and Control journal are relating to innovative research and practice in Information Technology: IT use in control and management systems; integration of IT with control; application of IT in socio-economic systems and manufacturing processes, mainly. The current research conducts a bibliometric performance and conceptual structure analysis of Studies in Informatics and Control journal from 2008 to 2019. Firstly, the journal performance is analysed according to the data retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection, putting the focus on the productivity of the authors, citations, countries, organizations and most relevant publications. Finally, the conceptual structure of the journal is analysed with bibliometric software tool SciMAT, identifying the main thematic areas that have been the object of research, their composition, relationship and evolution during the period analysed

Some bibliometric procedures for analyzing and evaluating research fields

Nowadays, measuring the quality and quantity of the scientific production is an important necessity since almost every research assessment decision depends, to a great extent, upon the scientific merits of the involved researchers. To do that, many different indicators have been proposed in the literature. Two main bibliometric procedures to explore a research field have been defined: performance analysis and science mapping. On the one hand, performance analysis aims at evaluating groups of scientific actors (countries, universities, departments, researchers) and the impact of their activity on the basis of bibliographic data. On the other hand, the extraction of knowledge from the intellectual, social or conceptual structure of a research field could be done by means of science mapping analysis based on bibliographic networks. In this paper, we introduce some of the most important techniques and software tools to analyze the impact of a research field and its scientific structures. Particularly, four bibliometric indices (h, g, hg and q2), the h-classics approach to identify the classic papers of a research field and three free science mapping software tools (CitNetExplorer, SciMAT and VOSViewer) are shown

30th Anniversary of Applied Intelligence: A combination of bibliometrics and thematic analysis using SciMAT

Applied Intelligence is one of the most important international scientific journals in the field of artificial intelligence. From 1991, Applied Intelligence has been oriented to support research advances in new and innovative intelligent systems, methodologies, and their applications in solving real-life complex problems. In this way, Applied Intelligence hosts more than 2,400 publications and achieves around 31,800 citations. Moreover, Applied Intelligence is recognized by the industrial, academic, and scientific communities as a source of the latest innovative and advanced solutions in intelligent manufacturing, privacy-preserving systems, risk analysis, knowledge-based management, modern techniques to improve healthcare systems, methods to assist government, and solving industrial problems that are too complex to be solved through conventional approaches. Bearing in mind that Applied Intelligence celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2021, it is appropriate to analyze its bibliometric performance, conceptual structure, and thematic evolution. To do that, this paper conducts a bibliometric performance and conceptual structure analysis of Applied Intelligence from 1991 to 2020 using SciMAT. Firstly, the performance of the journal is analyzed according to the data retrieved from Scopus, putting the focus on the productivity of the authors, citations, countries, organizations, funding agencies, and most relevant publications. Finally, the conceptual structure of the journal is analyzed with the bibliometric software tool SciMAT, identifying the main thematic areas that have been the object of research and their composition, relationship, and evolution during the period analyzed