The University of California, San Diego is performing one of the largest fire and structural research projects in the United States. Full-scale fire tests will be conducted on May 9th – 11th 2012 to assess the performance of active and passive fire protection systems and impacts and effects of fire spread and smoke movement in an earthquake-damaged high-rise building Read more…
Xtralis, a maker of Aspirating Smoke Detection (ASD) solutions, conducted a series of fire tests in a warehouse setting to demonstrate the capabilities of three smoke detection technologies, an air-sampling solution, a spot-type detector and a beam detector. Read more…
UPS Flight 6 emergency landed last week near Dubai. About 20 minutes after taking off from Dubai, the crew sought to return, reporting smoke in the cockpit and trouble maintaining altitude. The plane was unable to make an emergency landing in Dubai on its first pass, then began losing altitude and crashed inside a UAE military camp. Read more…
Polyurethane foam fires are known to produce very high heat release rates and extremely toxic fumes. As a result, these types of fires provide some unique life, firefighter, property safety and fire suppression challenges. In this study polyurethane foam fires and their combustion processes are [...]
In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the deployment of various types of battery technologies for use in Energy Storage Systems (ESS). Code enforcing bodies, such as local Authorities Having Jurisdiction (AHJs), are asked to successfully address risks associated with these new [...]
NFPA 13 2019 provided a ‘roadmap’ included in the back of the standard for 2019 section cross references for many of the sections found in the 2016 Edition. While this ‘roadmap’ table is useful, it is not a complete reference by any means and as [...]
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) made their codes and standards accessible online to members of the fire service. This complimentary service is outlined in step-by-step instructions in the video shown in the following. (more…)
In-rack sprinklers are used when ceiling sprinkler only protection is no longer adequate to protect the rack stored commodities. Well known disadvantages of current in-rack sprinkler designs are (1) additional costs and (2) additional risks of damage of the sprinkler heads during loading and unloading [...]
FM Global updated their Data Sheet 8-9 with new high-piled rack storage protection schemes. These new protection options can reduce installation costs by as much as 50%. Large-scale fire tests were used to validate these alternative designs. They demonstrated that large orifice sprinklers and higher [...]
Recent dust explosion accidents and their aftermath highlighted a renewed need to focus on a better understanding of the methods used in preventing these incidents. A two-phase study was commissioned by the Fire Protection Research Foundation of NFPA to develop and verify a more accurate [...]