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Fire

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Displaying 1 - 25 of 3901

Chemical Kinetics and Fire

December 31, 2025
Author(s)
Gregory Linteris, John Griffiths
The purpose of this chapter is to set out the principles of chemical kinetics as they apply to combustion in flames and fires. Chemical equilibrium, which was discussed in a previous chapter, deals with the final preferred state of a given set of reactants

Wind-Driven Fire Spread to a Structure from Composite Fences

November 26, 2025
Author(s)
Kathryn Butler, Erik Johnsson, Marco Fernandez, Shonali Nazare, Alexander Maranghides
Field observations show that combustible landscaping features are a common pathway leading fire spread directly to homes during wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires. NIST is studying how these features near a home burn to better understand their levels of

Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Smoke Yields of Non-Methane Organic Gases from Combustion of Small-Scale Residential Building Surrogates

October 9, 2025
Author(s)
Michael Link, Nathan Lima, Aika Davis, Ryan Falkenstein-Smith, Rodney Bryant, Thomas Cleary, Dustin Poppendieck
At the wildland-urban interface (WUI) structural fires can generate non-methane organic gases (NMOGs) from burning urban fuels like structural lumber, plastics, and carpet. These NMOGs can contaminate nearby homes and affect indoor air quality. NMOGs have

Measurement of the Smoldering and Flaming Heats of Combustion of Vegetative Fuels

June 30, 2025
Author(s)
Isaac Leventon, Karen De Lannoye, Ryan Greene
T The combustion of vegetative fuels or biomass has important applications in energy generation, wildfire spread, and structural fire safety. It is critical to be able to accurately quantify the energy content of these fuels (i.e., their respective heats

Eave and Vent Experiments (EaVE) Phase A

June 18, 2025
Author(s)
Christopher Brown, Alexander Maranghides, Giovanni Di Cristina Torres, Diana Bailey, Lucy Fox, Eric Link, Selvarajah Ramesh, Monica Flores, Shonali Nazare, J. Houston Miller, Erin McCaughey
This report documents a series of full-scale fire experiments conducted at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to characterize the performance of select wildland-urban interface (WUI) eave vents exposed to fire from noncombustible

Artificial Intelligence in the Fire Service: Considerations for Implementing Artificial Intelligence into Electronic Safety Equipment

June 3, 2025
Author(s)
Christopher Sampl, Clinton Smith, Albert Bahri, David Little, Richard Reel, Ash Liu, Jonathan Hodges, Ryan Falkenstein-Smith
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more pervasive in society, including public safety. There is a growing need for safety guidelines as AI becomes more integrated within electronic safety products used within the fire service. A group comprised of

The Burning Characteristics of 3 m to 6 m Dry Douglas-Fir Trees

May 1, 2025
Author(s)
Erik Johnsson, Giovanni Di Cristina Torres, Eric Mueller, Matthew Bundy, Anthony Chakalis, Marco Fernandez, Anthony Hamins
A series of experiments are reported on the burning behavior of dry, 3 m to 6 m tall, Douglas fir trees. The measurements were conducted in the open under quasi-quiescent conditions. The global measurements reported include the transient, peak, and total

Wind-Driven Fire Spread to a Structure from Landscape Timbers

April 16, 2025
Author(s)
Erik Johnsson, Kathryn Butler, Marco Fernandez, Wei Tang, Shonali Nazare, Philip Deardorff, Sebastian Arana, Alexander Maranghides
NIST is studying how combustible landscape features around a home burn to better understand their levels of hazard and potential roles in spreading wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires. A series of field experiments was conducted to examine the effects of

Global Burning Properties of Little Bluestem, Excelsior and Douglas Fir

April 15, 2025
Author(s)
Kunhyuk Sung, Eric Mueller, Matthew Bundy, Marco Fernandez, Anthony Hamins
A series of experiments were conducted to better understand the burning characteristics of three types of vegetative fuels: Little Bluestem grass, Douglas fir trees, and Excelsior. The measurements included the transient heat release rate (HRR) determined

The Character of Burning Residential and Office Items

March 31, 2025
Author(s)
Anthony Hamins, Giovanni Di Cristina Torres, Matthew Bundy, Anthony Chakalis, Marco Fernandez, Ickchan Kim, Selvarajah Ramesh, Mauro Zammarano
A series of experiments are reported on the burning behavior of single items and assemblies commonly found in offices and residences, including chairs, sofas, mattresses with pillows and bedclothes, and some miscellaneous items such as laptops, bookshelves

The Effect of Water Vapor on the Flammability of Fluorinated Refrigerants

March 24, 2025
Author(s)
Gregory Linteris, Michael Hegetschweiler, Valeri Babushok
Possible replacements for the refrigerant R-134a have been proposed in previous work based on their flammability behavior in standard tests of the Heating, Ventilation, Air-Conditioning, and Refrigeration industry. The present work extends that behavior to

Burning characteristics and smoke emission from mixed fuel cribs

March 21, 2025
Author(s)
Aika Davis, Thomas Cleary, Ryan Falkenstein-Smith, Rodney Bryant
Experiments were conducted to study the burning characteristics and smoke emission from mixed fuel crib assemblies designed to represent the main components in structures. Cribs consisting of wood lumber, oriented strand board, gypsum wallboard

Suspect Screening of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances in New Firefighter Turnout Gear Textiles

March 20, 2025
Author(s)
Andrew Maizel, Andre Thompson, Benjamin Place, Alix Rodowa, Jessica Reiner, Audrey Tombaugh, Halen Solomon, Brittany Stinger, Michelle Donnelly, Rick Davis
Firefighter turnout gear provides protection from exposure to flame, heat, and liquids, but has also been found to contain numerous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Previous examinations of PFAS in firefighter turnout gear have predominantly

Fire Data Generator (FD-Gen) v1.0.0

March 6, 2025
Author(s)
Hongqiang Fang, Wai Cheong Tam
This document serves as the documentation for the Fire Data Generator (FD-Gen), an automated tool designed to streamline the creation of multiple Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) input files. By employing Monte Carlo methods to sample relevant fire parameters

An Analysis of Aerosol Dynamics with Diffusion-Limited Growth in a Batch Reactor

December 16, 2024
Author(s)
Jiann Yang, Thomas Cleary, George Mulholland
A set of approximate first-order ordinary differential equations was derived from the general dynamic equation (GDE) to study the aerosol dynamics with homogeneous nucleation and condensational diffusion-limited growth in an isothermal batch reactor. A

Thermal Exposure of Objects Near Burning Electrical Enclosures

December 16, 2024
Author(s)
Kevin McGrattan, Isaac Leventon
This report documents a series of fire experiments performed within steel electrical enclosures and on open "ladder back" cable trays. The first objective is to measure the heat release rates and qualitatively understand the burning behavior of circuit
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