On May 23, 2023, the Committee of the 13th Asia-Pacific Conference on Combustion (ASPACC 2021) announced the list of winners of the Young Investigator Award. Hong Liu, a PhD student from Prof. Lizhong Yang's group in our laboratory, was awarded.

Mr. Liu gave an oral presentation entitled Flame extension length of ceiling jet driven by strong fire volume in a closed utility tunnel in the ASPACC 2021. For a fire accident in a utility tunnel, the ceiling jet driven by strong fire plume is the most typical fire behavior, which has not yet been fully explored in such an enclosed space. Therefore, Liu et al. performed a series of experimental studies on the fire dynamics inside a reduced-scale utility tunnel (1:8). The mechanism under the effects of environmental conditions and structural boundaries has been revealed through experiments and theoretical analysis, and a prediction model coupled with the characteristics of the fire source and environmental conditions has been proposed.

In addition, due to the continuous changes in environmental conditions, a unique combustion phenomenon - ghosting flame - has been observed under a non-stationary boundary condition inside a utility tunnel. Recently, we have conducted extensive research on the critical conditions of this phenomenon. The formation process of ghosting flame under environmental constraints is clarified and the critical conditions are determined. In the future, more experiments will be conducted to explore the critical conditions and mechanism of this special phenomenon.