October 2008

BFRL Monthly Highlights

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NIST Researchers Instruct Fire Chiefs and Trainers in Latest Fire Dynamics Research

Researchers from BFRL recently held a Fire Dynamics Conference in Gaithersburg, Md., for 400 fire chiefs and trainers from all over the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. James Turner welcomed all of the attendees with highlights of NIST’s partnership with the fire service. Dan Madrzykowski and Steve Kerber used videos of their studies to show firefighters how convection, conduction, and ventilation, including wind, affect a fire. Other topics of discussion included how building geometry, materials, furnishings, and firefighting tactics can influence fire growth and spread, leading to untenable conditions for firefighters. The attendees left with a copy of the presentation and all of the videos to share with the members of their departments to ultimately increase firefighter safety. More information on the seminar can be found at www.fire.gov.

CONTACT:
Steve Kerber
301-975-6879

BFRL Results Adopted by EPRI for Advanced Nuclear Technology Program

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) announced the adoption of methods and guidelines developed by the Computer Integrated Building Processes Group in collaboration with the FIATECH Consortium for enabling interoperability and integration for the design, construction, and information handover for the next generation of nuclear power plants. This work will be part of the recently approved EPRI Advanced Nuclear Technology Program: Configuration Management of 3-D Models, Associated Databases and Documents/Records.

CONTACT:
Mark Palmer
301-975-5858

BFRL Develops Software for Detailed Analysis of Construction Project Files

The BFRL Computer Integrated Building Processes Group released to the public a new software tool that provides detailed analyses of the entities and attributes in Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) files of construction projects. IFC is an evolving data exchange format that is used to exchange building information between different software packages. At present, the industry lacks effective measurement methods for assessing compliance of IFC files and for ensuring reliable and repeatable interoperability among building and construction software applications. Additionally, no capability existed for inspecting or measuring all the attributes of IFC files. The new NIST software tool provides the first set of measures for addressing this problem. This tool will help in defining and measuring the coverage of conformance test suites for building industry project models. The tool is available at: http://cic.nist.gov/vrml/cis/download/IFC_Excel.zip.

CONTACT:
Robert Lipman
301-975-3829

Technology Developed at NIST Implemented in Industry

Based on fire resistant construction materials research for steel conducted by Dale Bentz, Robert Zarr, and Daniel Flynn of BFRL, Anter Corporation has commercialized the slug calorimeter technique for measuring high temperature thermal conductivity. The slug calorimeter provides a measurement technology to determine the high temperature thermal conductivity of fire resistive and other materials. These values are critical both for quantifying the insulative capability of various materials and as inputs into quantitative thermal performance models. A detailed description of the FIRELINE 1000 product can be found at www.anter.com/thermal-conductivity.htm. This is a prime example of technology emanating from the World Trade Center investigation and being transferred from NIST to industry.

CONTACT:
Dale Bentz
301-975-5865

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