Fire Safety Engineering Division
• Large Fire Research Group:
(1) Advanced Fire Fighting Technology – To develop measurement equip-ment and techniques for the evaluation of 1) thermal environequip-ments experienced by fire fighters while conducting fire suppression and rescue tasks, 2) the performance of fire fighters protective clothing and equipment, while conducting fire suppression and rescue tasks, and 3) new fire fighting/suppression tools.
(2) Burning of Oil Spills – To determine conditions where in situ burning can be used effectively as a response method to accidental spills of crude oil on land and on water.
(3) Fire Research and Measurement Support for Arson Investigation – To provide measurement and modeling assistance to support the research and investigation programs of the ATF, Arson Enforcement Branch.
(4) Large Fire Research Facility – To provide large fire measurement capabilities to meet the needs of industry and government customers.
(5) Office Building Fire Research Program – To quantify the impacts of large fires on buildings and their occupants, and investigate the use of current technology/resources for mitigating the hazards.
• Fire Modeling and Applications Group:
(1) Advanced Fire Detection and Alarm Panels (Cybernetic Buildings) – To develop an advanced fire annunciator panel that will isolate the location of a fire in a building, and predict the short and long term behavior and effects of fire growth and smoke spread in the building.
(2) Application of Zone Fire Modeling in Fire Fighter Training – To support the use of the CFAST model in real-time fire fighter trainers.
(3) Enhanced Fire Safety Evaluation System – To advance the technical basis of the FSES and facilitate its evolution to a risk management tool.
(4) Experimental Application of Fire Hazard Analysis for U.S. passenger Train Systems – To demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of new generation test methods and hazard analysis techniques when applied to passenger rail transportation vehicle fire safety.
• Grant Summaries:
(1) Characterization of Sprinkler Sprays and their Interactions with Fire Induced Flows – To provide high resolution, large-scale planar data for validation of field models of sprinkler fire suppression; (a) drop size distribution and droplet velocities produced by a scaled pendent sprinkler head under various water flow rate conditions, (b) sprinkler and fire induced gas velocities, and (c) delivered water density to the burning surface.
(2) Fire Safety Engineering – To investigate fire safety engineering con-cerns associated with: a) properties characterization and performance evaluation of the protection foams; b) ignition and burning of heavy oil emulsion on water; c) critical literature review, experiments and modeling of two-dimensional fire sources; and d) integration of CFAST with existing models for the analysis of complex wall assemblies.
(3) Large Fire Analysis – To develop a modular post-earthquake and urban/wildland intermix fire growth model.
Fire Science Division
• Advance Fire Measurement Group:
(1) Improvement and Development of Fire Diagnostics – To improve the capabilities to quantitatively characterize fire behavior using experi-mental measurement techniques having reliable estimates of accuracy and precision.
(2) Sprinkler Drop Size and Velocity – To evaluate measurement methods for sprinkler sprays; measure drop size and velocity distributions for an existing sprinkler, evaluate the capabilities and limitations of the optical array probe, and provide information about the appropriateness of this technique and others for future measurements.
(3) Characteristics and Identification of Super-Effective Thermal Fire- Extinguishing Agents – To assess the feasibility of candidate thermal fire extinguishing agents and their properties to halon 1301.
(4) Carbon Monoxide Production and Prediction – To develop a funda-mental understanding of the mechanisms of carbon monoxide forma-tion in flames sufficient to produce a detailed predictive model.
(5) Particle Measurement in Support of the Semiconductor Industry – To develop a facility for accurately measuring particle size/concentration.
• Fire Sensing and Extinguishment Group:
(1) Fire Suppression Chemistry – To develop an understanding of how
particles which form in a flame inhibited by Fe(CO5) act to influence the extinction process and develop the next generation of suppression agents and technologies.
(2) Low Environmental Impact Fire Suppression – To facilitate the development and adoption of promising low environmental impact fire suppression technologies by: (1) establishing scientifically defensible test methods foe evaluating the fire suppression performance of proposed alternatives, and (2) supplementing research in the Next Generation Program (NGP).
(3) Dispersed Liquid Agent Fire Suppression Screen – To develop a bench-scale suppression screen suitable for comparing the perform-ance of dispersed fluids in extinguishing a laboratory-scale flame.
(4) Combustion of a Polymer (PMMA) Sphere in Microgravity – To determine the burning rates of PMMA spheres in a low gravity environment under various ambient oxygen conditions and using various sphere sizes.
(5) Lean Flammability Limit as a Fundamental Refrigerant Property, Phase III – To provide industry with a high precision, repeatable method for measuring flame limits based upon a counter-flow burner design.
(6) Technical Support for the Study of Droplet Interactions with Hot Surfaces – To provide technical support for the study of the dynamics of droplet/surface interaction and its effect on burning cessation in the DoD program.
(7) High Heat Flux Measurement Standards – To characterize the capa-bilities of the convective heat transfer facility for calibrating heat flux gauges, to complete a gas phase conduction facility for calibrations up to 100 kW/m2, and to develop for industry new techniques for applica-tions to critical technologies.
• Materials Fire Research Group:
(1) New Flame Retardant Principles – To develop and demonstrate successful application of new flame retardant principles for reducing the flammability of commodity polymers; to understand the flame retardant mechanism and their effect on physical properties of commodity polymers; and develop theoretical models to describe crosslink formation, mass loss rate, products composition, and relative heat release rate from polymer burning.
(2) Condensed Phase Processes – To understand condensed phase proc-esses during burning of polymeric materials by measuring thermal properties, gasification rates and temperatures in the polymer samples,
by deriving global degradation kinetics from molecular dynamic calculation, by characterizing polymer residues, and to develop gasification model including heat and degradation products transport processes.
(3) Effects of Melt/Drip Behavior on Fire Growth – To investigate the flow phenomena that are an integral part of the growth of a fire on a thermoplastic object; and to model these phenomena.
(4) Combustion of Silicone – To understand the combustion mechanism of siloxane and specifically why the heat release rate (as measured in the cone calorimeter) of burning siloxane is nearly independent of external thermal radiant flux.
(5) Flame Retardant Mechanism of SI Additives – To understand the flame retardant mechanism of SI powders in high density polyethyl-ene.
(6) Vehicle Fire Initiation and Propagation – To provide a better understanding of the dynamics of post-collision fires that threaten the safety of vehicle occupants and to develop realistic, repeatable ignition protocols for vehicle fire safety testing.
(7) Production and Certification of Cone Calorimeter SRMs – To produce and certify two standard reference materials for heat, mass, and smoke release rates in the Cone Calorimeter.
(8) Fire Safe Aircraft Interior Materials – To determine the effects of pre- ceramic polymers and clay-nanocomposites on the flammability of polymers useful in aircraft interiors, and to develop theoretical models to describe thermal degradation behavior of a variety of polymers including crosslink formation, products composition, and relative heat release rate from polymer burning.
(9) Radiative Ignition and Subsequent Flame Spread in Microgravity – To extend BFRL’s theoretical model of ignition and subsequent flame spread over a thermally thin material in microgravity to a thick material and participate conducting experiments in drop towers for comparison of the predicted results with the experimental observation.
• Grant Summaries:
(1) Cross-Linking of Polystyrene by Friedel-Crafts Chemistry to Enhance Resistance to Thermal Degradation – To develop a suitable system for Friedel-Crafts chemistry to achieve cross-linking of polystyrene only under conditions which approximate those which may be encountered in a small fire.
(2) A Fire Growth Simulation Model for Materials – To develop and
assess a simulation model to predict the fire growth on commercial materials used in building construction and interior finish applications.
(3) Evolution of Compartment Exhaust Gases in Buildings: Providing Evaluation Criteria and Design Tools – To develop correlations for the prediction of the levels of species yields for conditions leading to the transport of incomplete combustion products to locations remote from a burn room, and to provide design tools for fire safety engineers related to the formation and transport of CO and UHC away from a burning compartment into a building interior.
(4) Mixing and Radiation Properties of Buoyant Luminous Flame Environments – To measure the radiation and mixing properties of luminous buoyant turbulent flame environments and use these results to improve fire models.
(5) Gas Generator Induced Flow and its Effect on Fire Flame Extinction – To conduct a literature search on recirculation zones induced by either a bluff body, a baffle, a backward facing step or a trench inside a wind tunnel, perform some preliminary computations using Large Eddy Simulation (LES) code developed at BFRL and compare the results with the literature data for validation.
(6) Water Mist Penetrations through Complex Openings of Compart-ments – To understand the phenomena, to reveal the mechanisms, and to correlate the results of the mist penetration through openings of compartments during fire extinguishments.
(7) A Theoretical and Experimental Investigation on Physical, Thermal and Chemical Effects of Condensed Phase Fire Suppressants – To quantify the physical, thermal and chemical effects of condensed- phase fire suppressants in extinguishing counterflow laminar flames by experimental and computational techniques.