BFRL: 2008 Program Information (V 1.1)

Program Manager:
Anthony Hamins
Revised: 10/30/2007

BFRL Goal:
Innovative Fire Protection Technologies

Relevant Links

Advanced Measurement and Predictive Methods

To provide the fundamental knowledge, algorithms, and measurement techniques necessary to develop innovative fire protection technologies for the cost-effective safety of people, products, constructed facilities, and first responders.

What is the problem and why is it hard? Engineering correlations developed through fire testing over the past several decades have improved fire codes and technologies in the U.S. and produced a slow decline in the number of deaths and injuries due to unwanted fires (excluding the singular event of the WTC collapse). The total economic burden of structural fires in the U.S., however, continues to rise. In 2005, structural fire losses were estimated to be $9.2 B, an 11 % increase over 2004. To increase safety in a cost-effective manner, innovative fire safety technologies and performance-based codes are needed. This necessitates accurate prediction of the effect of design changes on actual fire performance. To achieve this, a higher level of understanding of the dynamics of fire through the development of more certain measurement methods and validated fire models is needed.

The advancement of fire metrology and modeling has been slow and incremental, at best. This is due to the fact that each fire is different and has its own unique dynamic characteristics which depend strongly on material geometry and chemical components and largely uncontrolled ambient conditions. Fire metrology remains largely status quo, including measurement techniques that are poorly understood with large or unquantifiable uncertainties. Advanced measurement techniques developed for laboratory-scale flames in benign and well-defined conditions cannot be readily and directly applied to fires, because of their thermally harsh environment. Advances in predictive capabilities have been limited by the inadequate understanding of fire behavior, which is needed over a very wide range of physical scales.

How is it solved today and by whom? For many of the fire safety design processes in constructed facilities, fire protection professionals and building designers still follow the traditional prescriptive-based approach. Although such an approach has proven to be adequate for code compliance, it does not provide the flexibility for innovative cost-effective fire safety designs to achieve an acceptable level of fire protection, and does not allow U.S. building design and fire protection industries to compete effectively in the global marketplace as more and more countries are transitioning from prescriptive-based fire safety approach to a performance-based one.

What is the new technical idea and why can we succeed now? The new technical idea is to improve and expand the predictive capability of current fire models using sub-models that better describe critical physical and chemical processes in fires and can be validated using advanced fire measurement techniques. Recent advances in laser diagnostics, highly automated analytical instruments, and fine and sub-grid modeling of fire physics and chemistry have provided opportunities to improve and advance current fire metrology and fire models.

Why should NIST do this? NIST is at the right place and the right time to take a leadership role in the implementation of performance based design through the development of accurate and appropriate tools that can be used to predict and measure fire behavior. The responsibility for insuring that these tools are accurate and are appropriately applied will, by necessity, fall largely on national fire research organizations. BFRL must provide leadership in creating the scientific and engineering knowledge base that will allow the development of the predictive and validation tools that are the foundation of performance based design for fire safety.

Progress in this Program is measured in terms of feedback from stakeholders in fire model development, papers published in archival journals and conference proceedings, and collaborations with other agencies. Examples of recent progress and results are outlined below in terms of the three major thrust areas of the Program:

Advanced Measurements for Large Fires

• Conference Presentation: R.A. Bryant, “A New Approach to Ventilation Measurements in Enclosure Fires,” Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Fire Science and Engineering (InterFlam), London, UK, September 2007, to appear.
• Report: R. A. Bryant, “Particle Image Velocimetry Measurements of Buoyancy Induced Flow Through a Doorway,” NISTIR 7252, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, 2005.
• Johnsson, Bundy, Hamins, “Reduced-Scale Enclosure Fires - Heat and Combustion Product Measurements”, Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Fire Science and Engineering (InterFlam), London, UK, September 2007, to appear.
• Report: Bundy, Hamins, Johnsson, Kim, Ko, & Lenhert, “Measurements of Heat and Combustion Products in Reduced-Scale Ventilation-Limited Compartment Fires,” NIST Technical Note 1483, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, July 2007.
• Presentation: Johnsson, Bundy, Hamins, Lenhert, "Compartment Fire Experiments for Field Model Validation", Presentation at Workshop on Fires in Enclosures, The Institute of Fire Safety Engineering Research and Technology (FireSERT), University of Ulster Northern Ireland, 30-31st May 2006.
• Organized Workshop: International Workshop on Calorimetry, in cooperation with NAFTL, to be held at NIST in September 2007.

Predictive Methods

• Software Release: Beta Test Version of Smokeview 5, July 2007.
• Software Release: Beta Test Version of FDS 5, July 2007.
• Report: G. Forney, “User’s Guide for Smokeview Version 4: A Tool for Visualizing Fire Dynamics Simulation Data”, NIST Special Publication 1017, August 2004 (updated March 2006);
• Report: J. Floyd and K. McGrattan, “Multiple Parameter Mixture Fraction with Two Step Combustion Chemistry for Large Eddy Simulation,” Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Fire Science and Engineering (InterFlam), London, UK, September 2007, to appear.
• Report: U. Wickström, D.Duthinh and K.McGrattan, “Adiabatic SurfaceTemperature forr Calculating Heat Transfer to Fire Exposed Structures,” Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Fire Science and Engineering (InterFlam), London, UK, September 2007, to appear.
• Report: Salley, Dreisbach, Hill, Kassawara, Najafi, Joglar, Hamins, McGrattan, Peacock, and Gautier, “Verification and Validation of Selected Fire Models for Nuclear Power Plant Applications,” NUREG-1824, US Nuclear Regulatory Agency, May 2007 (available at:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1824/ ).
• Paper: Salley, Dreisbach, Hill, Kassawara, Najafi, Joglar, Hamins, McGrattan, Peacock, and Gautier, “Verification and Validation – How to Determine the Accuracy of Fire Models,” Fire Protection Engineering, Vol. 34, Spring 2007.
• Paper: Forney, "Using Visualization to Better Understand Fire Dynamics," Fire Protection Engineering, July 2007, in review.
• Paper: Forney and Mell, “Visualization and Modeling of Smoke Transport Over Landscape Scales” Proceedings 2nd Fire Behavior and Fuels Conference, The Fire Environment – Innovations, management and Policy, May 2007, to appear.

Experiments Supporting Model & Standards Development

• Linteris, G.T. "Burning Velocity of 1,1-diflurorethane (R-152a)," ASHRAE Transactions, 112(2), 448-458, 2006 (best paper award from the ASHRAE)
• Linteris, G.T., Rafferty, I.P. "Scale Model Flames for Determining the Heat Release Rate from Burning Polymers," Progress in Scale Modeling, Williams, F.A., Takeno, T., Nakamura, Y., Editors, Tokyo, July 2007, to appear.
• Linteris, G.T., Raffery, I.P., "Flame Size, Heat Release, and Smoke Points in Materials Flammability," Fire Safety Journal, Aug. 2007, submitted.
• Gann, R.G., Averill, J.D., Marsh, N.D., and Nyden, M.R. “Assessing the Accuracy of a Physical Fire Model for Obtaining Smoke Toxic Potency Data”, Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Fire Science and Engineering (InterFlam), London, UK, September 2007, to appear.
• Provided technical support for development of the following standards:

ISO 13571, Life-threatening components of fire – Guidelines for the estimation of time available for escape using fire data, 2007.

ISO/TR 16312-2, Guidance for assessing the validity of physical fire models for obtaining fire effluent toxicity data for fire hazard and risk assessment – Part 2: Evaluation of individual physical fire models, 2007.

ISO/TS 19700, Controlled equivalence ratio method for the determination of hazardous components of fire effluents, 2007.

ISO 19706, Guidelines for assessing the fire threat to people, 2007.

References:

¹ Karter, M.J., U.S. Fire Loss for 2005, NFPA Journal, Sept./Oct. 2006, pp. 46-51.
² NISTIRs 6510, 6854, and 6923.