Latest Expert Witness News

Building fire expert teams up with Edinburgh University

A computer expert has teamed up with scientists at Edinburgh University to discover what can be learned from the 9/11 terror attacks to safeguard buildings devastated by fire.

Dr Barbara Lane, associate director of the fire group at the engineering firm Arup, is a specialist in the computer modelling of how fire affects buildings. Her ideas were used in the design of London's St Pancras Station and Beijing Airport's Terminal 3.

Dr Lane spent five years completing her PhD at Edinburgh University, investigating how steel-framed structures might behave during a fire.

She went on to advise various groups following the collapse of the World Trade Centre towers, thought to have been caused by fires ignited by the two terrorist planes colliding with the building.

Her computer models strongly contradict official American claims that the towers collapsed because fire protection was scraped from their steel frames and she put forward her own theory of "thermal expansion".

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