Engineering Laboratory

The Engineering Laboratory promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology for engineered systems in ways that enhance economic security and improve quality of life.

Moore Medical Center in Oklahoma following the Newcastle-Moore tornado, May 20, 2013.

NIST Awards $20 Million for Research Center to Help Communities Increase Resilience to Disaster

The Internet's Next Big Idea: Connecting People, Information, and Things

A steel shelter bolted to a concrete garage floor was all that remained of a wood-frame home destroyed in the Joplin, Mo., tornado of May 22, 2011.

NIST Issues Final Joplin Tornado Report, Begins Effort to Improve Standards and Codes

News and Updates

Join the NIST Center of Excellence Documenting and Modeling Community Recovery Webinar Thursday, May 3, 9-11 AM (MDT)

April 13, 2018

Learn about the NIST-funded Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning and how its research is advancing...

NIST Seeks Comments on “EDGe$” Tool that Can Help Communities Select Cost-Effective Resilience Projects

April 12, 2018

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking feedback about the utility and ease of use of a...

In this illustration, a gas well field has a circle on it. A dual-comb spectrometer at the center sends out laser light which bounces off mirrors, goes through a gas cloud and returns to the spectrometer for analysis.

Mobile ‘Dual-Comb’ Device Significantly Improves Methane Leak Detection

March 22, 2018

Accurately detecting, locating and quantifying leaks of methane, the main component of natural gas and a major fuel...

New NIST “EDGe$” Tool Can Help Communities Select Cost-Effective Resilience Projects

January 08, 2018

A powerful software-based technique for selecting cost-effective, infrastructure-based community resilience projects is...

Events

Industry Forum: Monitoring, Diagnostics, and Prognostics for Manufacturing Operations

May 08, 2018 to May 11, 2018

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is hosting an Industry Forum to bring Industry, Government, and Academia together to discuss the...

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

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 testing...

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

The BEES ( B uilding for E nvironmental and E conomic S ustainability) 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,...

STEP File Analyzer and Viewer

The STEP File Analyzer and Viewer (SFA) is a software tool that generates a spreadsheet or CSV files from a STEP (ISO 10303 –STandard for Exchange of Product...

EVAP-COND

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...

Tools & Instruments

Virtual Cybernetic Building Testbed

The NIST Virtual Cybernetic Building Testbed (VCBT) is a whole building emulator designed with enough flexibility to be capable of reproducibly simulating...

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...

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...

Indoor Air Quality Test House

In order to enable studies of a range of indoor air quality and ventilation issues, EL maintains a highly instrumented three-bedroom test house. Previous...