An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Building and Fire Research Laboratory Fiscal Year 2008 (2008) / Chapter Skim
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Disaster Resilient Structures and Communities (Fires)
Disaster Resilient Structures and Communities (Fires)
Pages 29-36
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From page 29... ...
The primary BFRL goals in this strategic area are Innovative Fire Protection Technologies and Homeland Security and Disaster Resilience. The key programs are the Reduced Risk of Fire Spread in Buildings Program, the Advanced Fire Service Technologies Program, the Advanced Measurement and Predictive Methods Program, the Safety of Threatened Buildings Program, and Fires at the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)
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From page 30... ...
The Reduced Risk of Fire Spread in Buildings Program addresses the important issue of the propagation of fires as it is influenced by different materials, a problem that is of major importance, as synthetic materials often have a higher energy-release rate than that of the natural materials that they replace. Good progress is being made in developing experimental and modeling capability for assessing the propagation of fires involving foams on real objects, which is a problem that is complicated by the formation of melts that flow and can form pool fires.
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From page 31... ...
There was no clear capability in the areas of analysis of the resulting models. In particular, a great deal of the work at the BFRL addresses systems and temporally evolving situations of interest; there is an apparent need for added competence in the area of dynamical systems that involves a qualitative and quantitative understanding of the dynamics in order to fully utilize modern methods of nonlinear dynamical systems for qualitative understanding and for designing appropriate algorithms and focusing the computational efforts.
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From page 32... ...
is able to facilitate the study of fires with the precise measurement of the heat-release rate at three different scales for fires in the ranges of 10 kW to 750 kW, 100 kW to 3 MW, and 200 kW to 15 MW. The LFL is designed to evaluate large fires; this facility is different from the proposed Structural Fire Endurance Laboratory, which will involve the testing of the mechanical performance of structures subjected to fires and will necessarily involve both the fire and material research experts in the BFRL.
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From page 33... ...
Program balance from the standpoint of a practical fire service is on track. Programs in toxicity measurement for escape from burning buildings, firefighter safety and effectiveness, and emergency escape management address crucial aspects of the fire problem today.
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From page 34... ...
This work also tackles the complex problem of fire brands, which draw on the specialized facilities of the Large Fire Laboratory at NIST to determine fire brand generation by burning Douglas firs, and the large wind tunnel at the Building Research Institute in Japan to determine the impact of fire brands on a variety of common roof materials. The WTC and Rhode Island nightclub fire investigations are excellent examples of responsiveness of the BFRL to short-term needs through the use of multidisciplinary teams that enable both the understanding of the event and the systemic understanding of root cause that leads to changes in codes and standards.
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From page 35... ...
CONCLUSIONS The BFRL continues to demonstrate a core competence in the Fire Strategic Priority Area, particularly in the design and execution of experiments and the consistent coupling of experiments to validate predictive, physics-based computational tools. The work on the World Trade Center investigation is a very strong indicator of the 11 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, 2007, Strategic Plan: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Technical Report, Washington, D.C.
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From page 36... ...
Specific recommendations in the area of technology include the following: increasing skill sets in systems engineering and dynamics, making explicit the ability to quantify uncertainty, and maintaining the core competence in fire systems that is founded on developing advanced experimentation capability coupled to validated computational tools. Investments should continue to be made in the experimental facilities as well as in making use of the facilities for the validation of mathematical models.
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