- Author
- National Research Council
- Title
- National Fire Research Program. Proposed.
- Coporate
- National Research Council, Washington, DC
- Report
- Proposed, 1969, 19 p.
- Keywords
- fire research | ignition | fire prevention | fire growth | fire detection | fire spread | fire departments | operations research | extinguishment | life hazards | building fires | fire data | fluid mechanics
- Abstract
- In 1959 the Committee on Fire Research and the Fire Research Conference, of the Division of engineering of the National Research Council, issued a Proposed Fire Research Program. The dearth at that time of basic research directed toward a fundamental understanding of the phenomena of ignition, fire growth, and fire spread was emphasized; and a plea was made for more sophisticated studies of fire phenomena, using the modern tools of applied mathematics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, chemical kinetics, and operations research. In detailing the program, emphasis was put on forest fires, partly because the forest, complex as it is structurally, presents a more nearly uniform fuel to burn than does the city; and a principle of scientific research on related problems difficult to understand is to attack the simpler ones first.