Facilities
WPI Fire Protection Engineering, in concert with industry leaders, has developed state-of-the-art laboratories where teams of faculty members and students search for the best way to build and protect against fire.
Combustion Laboratory
The Combustion Lab, which occupies 1,500 feet of space in Salisbury Laboratories, was built in 2010. It houses one fume hood and two large hoods (4000 cfm) in addition to student offices and a small conference room. Equipment in the lab includes an intelligent Laser Applications GmbH (ILA) 75 mW fixed optical path length fp50-shift LDA system for measuring velocity, an environmental chamber (-30ºC to 40ºC), a Servomex ServoTough Oxy paramagnetic oxygen analyzer capable of measuring oxygen concentration in corrosive environments, and a Servomex Oxy paramagnetic gas analyzer for measuring CO, CO2 and O2 vapor.
UL Fire Protection Engineering Performance Lab at Gateway Park
The UL Fire Protection Engineering Performance Lab consists of a 190-square-meter floor space with a 9.2-meter-high ceiling, enabling researchers to construct and experiment on large-scale test specimens. The centerpiece of the laboratory is a large capacity extraction hood, which features a 6-meter by 6-meter exhaust hood located 6 meters above the lab floor. This space is ideal for testing open burning fires (e.g., liquid fuel pan fires), full-scale compartment fires, exterior façade fires, and more which allows substantial near-field measurements of fire tests. It can also be used to replicate certain external exposure fire conditions. The lab also has intermediate and large-scale wind tunnels for fire spread and wildfire behavior research.
Honeywell Fire Protection Engineering Fundamentals Lab at Gateway Park
The Honeywell Fire Protection Engineering Fundamentals Lab contains two cone calorimeters, an FM Fire Propagation Apparatus, and a Particle Image Velocimetry system supported by an automatic traversing system, which can be used to make accurate, non-intrusive velocity measurements. The lab also contains a FTIR spectrometer, thermogravimetric analysis apparatus, a differential scanning calorimeter, ovens, a furnace, and hooded bench space. These pieces of apparatus enable researchers to conduct a wide range of small-scale experiments and standardized tests.