Torben Grumstrup

Torben’s research is focused largely on heat transfer in spreading fires. Specifically, how heat generated in flames is transmitted to nearby fuel as a fire moves through a landscape. He uses results from indoor laboratory experiments and outdoor field experiments to understand spatial- and time-dependent behavior of fuel heating as a function of key fuels, weather, and topology inputs. Torben specializes in creating new instrumentation for lab and field work. He developed the Fire Lab Heat Flux Package (HFP), a fire-hardened device for measuring wind speed and direction, gas temperature, and thermal radiation heat flux in a field-scale fire. Torben also works on improving survivability of digital cameras acquiring video inside a spreading fire front.