NIST only participates in the February and August reviews.
Reliable measurements of the heat transfer, flow, gases and particles in fire environments are important to understand fire phenomena and improve computational fire models, such as NIST's Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS). We design lab-scale and full-scale experiments to study fire ignition and dynamics and employ a variety of measurement methods, from basic thermocouples to IR thermography for thermal measurements, gas sensors, velocity probes, and aerosol and particle measurement tools. The principles of energy and mass conservation are used for analysis, as well as conjugate heat transfer and CFD modeling, to provide more insight to the physical processes and compare to the measurements. Characterization of the thermal, fluid, and aerosol and particle physics can improve our understanding in different aspects of fire science, such as improved fire detection or prevention systems, improved model predictions of fire smoke (for visibilty, detection, deposition and emissions), and better characterization of the thermal exposure of firebrands (embers) in wildland-urban interface fires.
References
Mensch AE, Wessies S, Hamins A, Yang JC: Fire Safety Journal 140: 103859, 2023
Mensch AE, Hamins A, Tam WC, Lu ZQJ, Markell K, You C, Kupferschmid M: Fire Technology 57 (3) 2021
Mensch AE, Cleary TG: International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 143 (11): 118444, 2019
Thermal fluids; Heat transfer measurements; Heat transfer modeling; Fire detection; Smoke measurements; Soot measurements; Firebrand measurements