Mechanism of Fires (PDF)

Dr. Ali S. Rangwala is a Professor of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). He has a Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of California, San Diego. He received the NSF CAREER award on Controlling Mechanisms of Dust Layer Ignition and Flame Propagation in Dust Clouds. He has also served on panels for the National Science Foundation (NSF), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), National Fire Protection Association, (NFPA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), related to areas of combustion, fire and explosion. He has 4 patents related to different topics in combustion. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed international journal articles and has presented in over 70 conferences. He teaches three graduate courses: Explosion Protection, Industrial Fire Protection, and Combustion at the Department of Fire Protection Engineering in WPI.







Dr. Vasudevan Raghavan is currently Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT), India. He obtained his Ph.D. from IIT Madras and has carried out his postdoctoral research in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA, in NASA aided microgravity droplet combustion simulations. His areas of research include computational fluid dynamics applied to reacting flows, laminar flames, fire modelling, evaporation and combustion of liquid fuel droplets, flame spread and liquid fuel pool combustion, gasification and combustion of coal and biomass. He has authored about 110 international peer-reviewed journal articles and 60 international conference articles. He teaches graduate courses such as Theory of Fire Propagation, Fundamentals of Combustion, Combustion Technology and Applied Thermodynamics at the Department of Mechanical Engineering in IITM.