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Fire on the Web


 

firefighter

Fire on the Web is a collection of resources from the Building and Fire Research Laboratory's Fire Research Division at NIST. These Web pages provide links to fire related software, experimental fire data and mpeg/quick time movies of fire tests that can be downloaded and/or viewed with a Web browser.

Fire Tests/Data

  • Fire Calorimetry Database (FCD)
    The National Fire Research Laboratory (NFRL) operates calorimeters to measure the heat and combustion products for fires in the range of 50 kW to 20,000 kW. This Fire Calorimetry Database (FCD) contains results of fire experiments conducted at the NFRL. 
  • Diffusion Flame Measurements - Profile data are presented here to aid research on the chemical structure of laminar, hydrocarbon diffusion flames - both for comparisons with other experimental results as well as for evaluating the predictions of flame models. Specifically, measurements made at NIST during the period 1984-1998 of species concentrations (mole fraction), temperatures (K), and velocities (cm/s) are included for two diffusion flame systems.
  • Residential Fire Sprinklers - Two tests are presented that demonstrate how a fire is affected by a sprinkler.
  • Residential Smoke Alarms - In cooperation with the United States Fire Administration, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, and other sponsors,, NIST has evaluated current and emerging smoke alarm technology responses to common residential fire scenarios and nuisance alarm sources. Data for more than 30 real-scale tests are available and include the time varying concentrations of CO, CO2, and O2, smoke obscuration, and temperature at multiple locations in the structure. The response of numerous smoke alarms place throughout the structures are also included.
  • Passenger Trains - The Fire Research Division has been involved in research related to passenger train fire safety since the 1970's. The results of these research studies are summarized here. The complete reports are available as Adobe Acrobat PDF files.
  • Fire Fighting Agents - Fire experiment comparing treated and untreated vinyl siding.

Software/Models

  • Fire Dynamics Simulator and Smokeview - FDS is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of fire-driven fluid flow. Smokeview is a visualization program that is used to display the results of an FDS or CFAST simulation.
  • CFAST - CFAST is a two-zone fire model capable of predicting the environment in a multi-compartment structure subjected to a fire. It calculates the time-evolving distribution of smoke and gaseous combustion products as well as the temperature throughout a building during a user-prescribed fire.
  • Fire Modeling Software Online - A collection of fire related software developed by the Building and Fire Research Laboratory available for free download.
  • ToGS - Turnout Gear Selector (ToGS) helps the manufacturers, purchasers and users of fire turnout gear evaluate and select the turnout coat and pants ensemble that best meets their needs.

Publications Information

  • FIREDOC - A collection of Building and Fire Research Laboratory publications (1993 - 2009) available for free download.
  • NIST Publications Portal - search for NIST publications by topic area, author, or date.

Other

  • Holiday Fire Safety - Trees used indoors for the holidays account for approximately 400 fires annually, resulting in 10 deaths, 80 injuries and more than $15 million in property damage. This video demonstrates the how quickly the fire can develop when a DRY tree is exposed to an open flame.
  • Research Information Services (RIS) - 60,000 document collection searchable through FIREDOC is accessible via the Web.
  • Fire.Gov - Fire Fighting Research On-Line.
Created June 16, 2014, Updated March 1, 2022