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

Two firefighters look over the last flames inside a compartment where the flammability of cross-laminated timber buildings is being tested.

New NIST Roadmap Charts Path to Reduced Fire Hazards from Materials

May 21, 2018

Fire researchers will tell you that there’s a simple solution for reducing fire hazards: eliminate flammable materials...

A home in the mountains of Puerto Rico lies in ruins as a result of the extreme force winds of Hurricane Maria.

NIST Launches Study of Hurricane Maria’s Impact on Puerto Rico

May 16, 2018

GAITHERSBURG, Md.—The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced it...

Astronaut aboard the International Space Station is seen preparing a carousel holding samples of materials for a smoke detection test.

NIST/NASA Study Shows One Detector Doesn’t ‘Fit All’ for Smoke in Spacecraft

May 01, 2018

What had been a peaceful and productive mission for the six men aboard the Russian space station Mir, including U.S...

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...

Events

Disaster Resilience Symposium

August 14, 2018 to August 15, 2018

The Engineering Laboratory at NIST, Gaithersburg, will be hosting a symposium featuring the 2016 Disaster Resilience Grant Research Program recipients . 12 of...

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

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...

CFAST

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

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...