Engineering Laboratory

Equipment stands on tripods on a balcony with the beach and sea in the background.

Update on NIST’s Champlain Towers South Investigation

Animation shows particles as blue dots circulating through a living room via windows, fans and filters.

Streamlined NIST Tool Could Help Homeowners, Renters Reduce Airborne Exposure to COVID

A couch is in flames in a mocked-up room inside a large fire testing facility.

Saving Lives by Making Upholstered Furniture More Resistant to Fire

News and Updates

Study Links Urbanization to Poor Ecological Knowledge, Less Environmental Action

May 4, 2022

A new study by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and collaborators highlights a sharp contrast between urban and suburban

Building that has been destroyed by a tornado

NIST, NSF Award More Than $7.6 Million to Support Disaster Resilience Research

May 4, 2022

The agencies are funding 20 projects to be conducted across 24 institutions through the Disaster Resilience Research Grant (DRRG) program, which they manage

NIST Releases Study on Blockchain and Related Technologies for Manufacturing Supply Chain Traceability

April 20, 2022

Manufacturing supply chains are increasingly susceptible to disruptions and are targets for bad actors seeking to steal proprietary information and/or sabotage

Happy Retirement, Cone Calorimeter!

March 31, 2022

After 40 years in service as a groundbreaking NIST-invented device for measuring the flammability of materials at the lab bench scale, the NIST cone calorimeter

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

January 8, 2021

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

May 18, 2022

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

EVAP-COND, Version 4

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 testing

View All Software

Tools and Instruments

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 publication

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

Manufacturing Robotics Testbed

The NIST manufacturing robotics test bed consists of several labs located in three buildings on the main NIST campus. Combined, these serve as a resource for

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

Awards

Adam Jacoff and David Schmitt Receive DOC FY 2021 Real Property Portfolio Award

For cleaning out and vacating NIST materials from the NIKE site so that the property could be sold and for developing the Program of

2021 - Bronze Medal Award---Robert Commarota, Cerasela Constantin, Sushama Singh , Simon Frechette , Eric Shirley, Andrea Medina-Smith, Elisabeth Mansfield, Douglas Montgomery, Peter Gehring, Fernando J. Cintron

For development of an IT system to modernize and simplify NIST's publication processes

2021 - Bronze Medal Award---Sherwin McAdam, Hing Pan Wong, Tracy Retterer, Karla Sims, John Furgerson, Daniel Dender, William Clark, Jody Sandel, Hong Zhang, Yali Zhang

For developing and implementing an acquisition management tool providing transparency and visibility to customers, leadership, and acquisition professionals.

2021 - Bronze Medal Award---W. Stuart Dols, Brian Polidoro, Dustin Poppendieck, Steven Emmerich, Lisa Ng

For development, application and dissemination of the Fate and Transport of Indoor Microbiological Aerosols (FaTIMA) tool in response to COVID-19.