Engineering Laboratory

A box of cigarettes is labeled: Standard Cigarette for Ignition Resistance Testing.

NIST Releases a New Standard Cigarette for Testing the Flammability of Mattresses and Furniture

A view through a door window of N95 masks being decontaminated.

NIST Tool Could Help Hospitals Repurpose Rooms for Disinfecting N95 Masks

a latex gloved hand holds a syringe that has been loaded with medicine

Manufacturing Standards for Biopharmaceuticals: A Conversation with NIST’s Sheng Lin-Gibson and Vijay Srinivasan

News and Updates

Diagram shows a mattress being set on fire by gas burners in a standard flammability test.

Mattress Flammability Standard Is a Lifesaver, NIST Report Finds

November 18, 2020

No matter how soft and cozy, beds that have gone up in flames are a source of some of the deadliest fires in the U.S. As large pieces of furniture loaded with

NIST Designs a Prototype Fuel Gauge for Orbit

November 12, 2020

Liquids aren’t as well behaved in space as they are on Earth. Inside a spacecraft, microgravity allows liquids to freely slosh and float about. This behavior

A man faces away from the camera, taking a photo of a damaged storefront.

Natural Disaster Preparations May Aid Businesses’ Pandemic Response

October 19, 2020

The social and economic impacts of COVID-19 have battered small and medium-sized enterprises, putting millions of jobs in the U.S. at risk. And a year rife with

Insights Into Behavior During Chimney Tops 2 Fire Could Improve Evacuation Planning

September 2, 2020

As global temperatures continue to rise, cities and towns not historically prone to large wildfires may begin to face greater threats. An unsuspecting Tennessee

Events

2020 Service Life Prediction Meeting

Sun, Mar 7 - Fri, Mar 12 2021

NIST is closely monitoring guidance from Federal, State, and local health authorities on the outbreak of COVID-19. To

Industry Impacts

Photo of a burnt faceplate from a firefighter's gear

Firefighter Protective Equipment

Firefighters rely on self-contained breathing apparatuses (SCBA) to protect them from dangerous heat and toxic smoke. NIST research helped to improve industry

Cityscape in the background. Solar panels in the foreground.

Framing the Future of the Electric Grid

The U.S. electrical distribution system is a patchwork of 100+ years of upgrades that create basic reliability issues and expose entire regions to unnecessary

Net-Zero Energy House

To decrease the $225 billion that U.S. consumers spend each year in household energy costs will require accurate, reliable information about how new

Structural Resilience of Infrastructure

The best way to prevent buildings, bridges and other structures from collapsing—whether because of natural forces, human error or malicious attacks—is to learn

Software

Tool for Evaluation of Vaporized Hydrogen Peroxide Disinfection of N95 Masks in Small Rooms

June 3, 2020

This spreadsheet tool estimates the vaporized hydrogen peroxide (VHP) concentration in air of rooms used for VHP mask disinfection systems. The tool employs a

FDS and Smokeview

Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of fire-driven fluid flow. The software solves numerically a form of the Navier

BEES

February 5, 2018

The BEES (Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability) software brings to your fingertips a powerful technique for selecting cost-effective

CONTAM

CONTAM is a multizone indoor air quality and ventilation analysis computer program designed to help you determine: (a) airflows: infiltration, exfiltration, and

STEP File Analyzer and Viewer

November 10, 2020

The free STEP File Viewer supports parts and assemblies, dimensions and tolerances, sketch and supplemental geometry, and datum targets. The STEP File Analyzer

EVAP-COND

May 1, 2016

EVAP-COND is a software package that contains NIST's simulation models for a finned-tube evaporator and condenser. The "tube-by-tube" modeling scheme allows for

CFAST

The Consolidated Model of Fire and Smoke Transport, CFAST, is a computer program that fire investigators, safety officials, engineers, architects and builders

VCCTL Software

(Return to Cement Hydration and Degradation Modeling Software) The Virtual Cement and Concrete Testing Laboratory (VCCTL) software provides a virtual

View All Software

Tools and Instruments

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

Integrating Sphere-based Weathering Device

In the artificial ultraviolet (UV) weathering of materials, a need exists for weathering devices that can uniformly illuminate test specimens with a high level

Smart Manufacturing Systems (SMS) Test Bed

The Smart Manufacturing Systems (SMS) Test Bed is comprised of three major components: Computer-Aided Technologies (CAx) Lab Manufacturing Lab Data

NIST Industrial Wireless Systems Testbed

The Industrial Wireless Systems (IWS) Testbed integrates existing and emerging wireless technologies with live physical systems found in factories of all types