IFRF

Our History

The basis for the Foundation were laid in 1948 with the establishment of an International Flame Radiation Research Committee. The use of the word "Radiation" reflected the centre of interest of the Members at that time.

The organisation presently known as the  International Flame Research Foundation -  IFRF - came into being in 1955 with changes in name and structure reflecting growth in the scope of the work and the size of the organisation. The IFRF was formed and registered in the Netherlands.

From the early days, the Foundation was an industrially based co-operative research organisation between the British Iron and Steel Research Association (BISRA), the Iron and Steel Research Association of France (IRSID) and, the Royal Dutch Iron and Steel Company (KNHS). This International Consortium provided the basis for the design handbooks for the steam atomised, heavy fuel oil lances used in the open hearth furnaces of France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom during the fifties and sixties, until the Siemens-Martin process was superseded by LD-steelmaking. It has also provided a fundamental basis, initially in terms of heat transfer by radiation, but subsequently in the field of flame aerodynamics and chemistry, to expand the original consortium objectives to encompass flames from other fuels to be applied in combustion chambers of other industries.

Nowadays, the Foundation has grown into a network which has members established in twenty three countries world-wide. These are: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Mexico, Peoples Republic of China, Poland, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and, the United States of America.

The work of the IFRF can be seen in terms of phases, following from: the first decade (1950-1960); the sixties - decade of combustion aerodynamics; the seventies was the decade of NOx, mathematical modelling and the introduction of contract research; the eighties - decade of coal combustion research and near field aerodynamics; and the nineties, the decade of combustion system scaling, development of specialised research facilities, and numerical simulations. All these phases are developed in the book recently published by Roman Weber:

This book is available at the Foundation upon request.