Dr Martyn S. McLaggan
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering
Lecturer in Low Carbon Design
+44 114 222 5783
Full contact details
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering
Room E111
Sir Frederick Mappin Building (Broad Lane Building)
Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD
- Profile
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The aim of my research is to safely reduce carbon emissions in the built environment. My focus is on quantifying the fire risk of low carbon materials, such as timber and facades, so that they can be used safely and confidently.
Dr Martyn S. McLaggan
Martyn McLaggan (he/him) graduated with a MEng in Architectural Engineering from the University of Strathclyde and subsequently attained his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in Fire Safety Engineering. His work investigated how to balance the potential energy savings of modern low carbon building materials with their inherent fire risk.
He spent two years as a research consultant and postdoctoral fellow in a position joint between Denmark and Sweden, focused on façades and how to apply research to industry.
The Grenfell Tower fire demonstrated the huge lack of understanding in the area of façade fires. As a result, Martyn worked on an audit of flammable cladding while a research fellow at the University of Queensland, Australia. As part of a state-wide project, he directed a team of researchers to develop the Cladding Materials Library, an open access material database containing quantitative data needed by practitioners and researchers.
Martyn joined the department as Lecturer in Low Carbon Design in 2021. His work is heavily interdisciplinary and combines sustainability, fire safety, structures and architecture to facilitate the design of safe sustainable structures.
His interests primarily lie in enabling the usage of novel and renewable low carbon building materials, such as timber and other natural materials, advanced composites and phase change materials.
This research works towards answering the difficult question of how to effectively address the climate and biodiversity emergency whilst still maintaining an adequate level of safety in the built environment.
- Research interests
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- Low carbon materials
- Timber and natural materials e.g. CLT, hemp, bamboo, cork
- Energy efficiency
- Balancing sustainability and fire safety
- Advanced composite building products
- Reducing embodied carbon
- Facades
- Fire exposures for modern compartments
- Upward flame spread
- Bespoke experiments to generate quantified data
- Development of simplified numerical models
- Publications
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Show: Featured publications All publications
Featured publications
Journal articles
- Upward flame spread behaviour of cladding materials on a medium-scale ventilated façade experimental setup with a single combustible wall. Fire Safety Journal, 142, 104020-104020.
- Effect of cavity parameters on the fire dynamics of ventilated façades. Fire Safety Journal, 133.
- Factors influencing the fire dynamics in open-plan compartments with an exposed timber ceiling. Fire Safety Journal, 129.
- Large-scale compartment fires to develop a self-extinction design framework for mass timber—Part 1: Literature review and methodology. Fire Safety Journal, 128.
- Maximum allowable damage approach to fire safety performance quantification. Fire Safety Journal, 128.
- Towards a better understanding of fire performance assessment of façade systems: current situation and a proposed new assessment framework. Construction and Building Materials, 300. View this article in WRRO
- Dispersion Methodology for Technical Lignin into Polyester Polyol for High-Performance Polyurethane Insulation Foam. ACS Applied Polymer Materials, 3(7), 3528-3537.
- Flammability trends for a comprehensive array of cladding materials. Fire Safety Journal, 120. View this article in WRRO
- Upward flame spread for fire risk classification of high-rise buildings. International Journal of High-Rise Buildings, 10(4), 299-310.
- Fire performance of phase change material enhanced plasterboard. Fire Technology, 54(1), 117-134.
- Flammability assessment of phase change material wall lining and insulation materials with different weight fractions. Energy and Buildings, 153, 439-447. View this article in WRRO
Datasets
All publications
Journal articles
- Upward flame spread behaviour of cladding materials on a medium-scale ventilated façade experimental setup with a single combustible wall. Fire Safety Journal, 142, 104020-104020.
- Effect of cavity parameters on the fire dynamics of ventilated façades. Fire Safety Journal, 133.
- Factors influencing the fire dynamics in open-plan compartments with an exposed timber ceiling. Fire Safety Journal, 129.
- Large-scale compartment fires to develop a self-extinction design framework for mass timber—Part 1: Literature review and methodology. Fire Safety Journal, 128.
- Maximum allowable damage approach to fire safety performance quantification. Fire Safety Journal, 128.
- Towards a better understanding of fire performance assessment of façade systems: current situation and a proposed new assessment framework. Construction and Building Materials, 300. View this article in WRRO
- Dispersion Methodology for Technical Lignin into Polyester Polyol for High-Performance Polyurethane Insulation Foam. ACS Applied Polymer Materials, 3(7), 3528-3537.
- Flammability trends for a comprehensive array of cladding materials. Fire Safety Journal, 120. View this article in WRRO
- Upward flame spread for fire risk classification of high-rise buildings. International Journal of High-Rise Buildings, 10(4), 299-310.
- Flame Spread and Smoke & Toxicity Testing Interpretations for Plastic Pipes - Technical Notes. International Journal of Maritime Engineering, 161(A2).
- Fire performance of sandwich panels in a modified ISO 13784-1 small room test: the influence of increased fire load for different insulation materials. Fire Technology, 54(4), 819-852. View this article in WRRO
- Fire performance of phase change material enhanced plasterboard. Fire Technology, 54(1), 117-134.
- Flammability assessment of phase change material wall lining and insulation materials with different weight fractions. Energy and Buildings, 153, 439-447. View this article in WRRO
Conference proceedings papers
- Fire dynamics in under-ventilated mass timber room compartments. Proceedings of the 12th Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Science and Technology (AOSFST 2021)
- The response of exposed timber in open plan compartment fires and its impact on the fire dynamics. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Structures in Fire (SiF2020)
- Heat release and flame spread assessment of insulation in External Thermal Insulation Composite System (ETICS) façades. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, Vol. 1107(3). Nancy, France, 12 September 2018 - 14 September 2018.
Datasets
- Upward flame spread behaviour of cladding materials on a medium-scale ventilated façade experimental setup with a single combustible wall. Fire Safety Journal, 142, 104020-104020.
- Research group
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Fire; Steel and composite structures; Resources, Infrastructure Systems and built Environmental Discipline
- Grants
- Research Group Members/PhD Opportunities
Research group members: Julian Mendez (University of Queensland, Australia), PhD candidate, External fire spread risk in tall building design.
PhD opportunities: If you're interested in a PhD project, please contact Martyn at the above email. Current PhD opportunities in the department can be viewed here.