Event
FPE Special Seminar: Measurement and Prediction of Flammability Behavior
Thursday, February 20, 2020
11:00 a.m.
3106 JM Patterson Building, UMD College Park
Christine O'Brien
cobrien3@umd.edu
Speaker: Isaac Leventon, Ph.D., Fire Research Scientist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), FPE Adjunct Professor and UMD/ME/FPE Alumnus (Ph.D. '15)
Title: Measurement and Prediction of Flammability Behavior
Abstract:
With the increasing use of engineered materials and products that are selected for their low cost, light weight, and favorable mechanical or thermophysical properties, despite their potential flammability risks, and the increasing frequency of large fire events around the world that present severe fire exposures, material flammability remains a critical aspect of fire safety science. Unfortunately, quantitative predictions of material flammability performance – specifically flame spread and fire growth – are beyond the scope of current state of the art design tools. This talk will present an overview of the experimental and analytical tools and approaches that Dr. Leventon has developed with the Fire Research Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to measure the material properties and physical mechanisms controlling fire growth behavior. Applications include development of a material flammability database; experimental and modeling studies characterizing firebrand generation, flame spread in wildfires, furniture flammability, and fire growth in electrical enclosures; and collaboration in the Measurement and Computation of Fire Phenomena (MaCFP) project.
