NIST Home > Building and Fire Research Portal

Building and Fire Research Portal - Overview

The mission of the building and fire research programs at NIST is to anticipate and meet the measurement science, standards, and technology needs of the U.S. building and fire safety industries in areas of critical national need. Strategic goals include net-zero energy high-performance buildings, advancing infrastructure delivery and improving construction productivity through information integration and automation technologies, sustainable infrastructure materials, innovative fire protection, and disaster-resilient structures and communities, which includes work on hurricanes, earthquakes, and fires. NIST has specific statutory responsibilities for fire prevention and control, earthquake hazards reduction, windstorm impact reduction, and building and fire safety investigations.

More information may be available on the Engineering Laboratory homepage.

Subject Areas

Instruments

The National Fire Research Laboratory

The National Fire Research Laboratory (NFRL) is adding a unique facility that will serve as a center of excellence for fireperformance of … more

Line Heat-Source Guarded Hot Plate

The 1-meter guarded hot-plate apparatus measures thermal conductivity of building insulation. This facility provides for absolute measurement of … more

Large-Scale Structures Testing Facility

The large-scale structures testing facility consists of a universal testing machine (UTM), and a 13.7m-high reaction buttress equipped with a … more

Fire Emulator/Detector Evaluator

The fire emulator/detector evaluator (FE/DE) is a computer-controlled flow tunnel used to re-create the environments surrounding detectors in the … more

Large Fire Research Facility

As the federal government's principal fire research laboratory, EL maintains some of the country's best and most extensive fire testing … more

Radiative Gasification Apparatus

This apparatus, developed at EL, determines gasification rate (mass loss rate) of a horizontally oriented specimen exposed in a nitrogen … more

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Software

SteelVis

SteelVis is a viewer for CIS/2 files and a translator from CIS/2 to IFC files. Uses are described below. The CIMSteel … more

IFC File Analyzer

The IFC File Analyzer generates a spreadsheet from an IFC file. IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) is the data exchange standard used to facilitate … more

ALOFT-FT

ALOFT-FT TM Smoke Plume Trajectory Model for Personal Computers ALOFT-FT TM (A Large Outdoor Fire plume Trajectory model - Flat Terrain) is a … more

Software: FDS and Smokeview

Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of fire-driven fluid flow. The software solves numerically … more

Software: LoopDA

LoopDA is a natural ventilation design tool developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Version 3.0 is an update to the … more

Software: CONTAM

CONTAM is a multizone indoor air quality and ventilation analysis computer program designed to help you determine: (a) airflows: infiltration, … more

>> see all Building and Fire Research software ...