Daniel Madrzykowski, Engineering Laboratory/Fire Research Division, NIST
The Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974 provided NIST with the mission to conduct basic and applied fire research for the purposes of understanding fire behavior and to reduce losses from fire. Since the program began in the 70’s great strides have been made in improving the fire safety of civilians and reducing the number of structure fires. Unfortunately injuries and fatalities of firefighters are not being reduced at the same rate, in fact the rate of firefighter fatalities on the fire ground has increased. Why? NIST fire researchers have shown that as the construction of our homes has changed and the fuel loads within our homes has changed, the behavior of the fires has also changed. Through laboratory and field experiments, NIST has demonstrated alternate firefighting tactics that are being adopted by fire departments across the country. In addition, NIST has developed a computational fluid dynamics program, FDS, which is used to model fire incidents that resulted in fire fighter line of duty deaths. These simulations connect the challenge firefighters face with the science based tactical solutions. The presentation will feature videos of real scale fire experiments.
14 июн 2015
