January 28, 2004[—The Fire Protection Research Foundation of the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) presented the third annual William M. Carey Award recently to the authors of a paper titled “Fire Plume and Fire Sprinkler Interaction.” The Award was presented at the Foundation’s eighth annual Fire Suppression and Detection Research Application Symposium in January.
The authors are Dr. Richard Lueptow of Northwestern University, and John A. Schwille and Dr. Pravin Gandhi, both of Underwriters Laboratories Inc. The Award recognizes the conference’s best paper from last year, voted by attendees. About 35 papers were presented at that conference.
The Award honors the late William Carey, P.E., senior staff engineer at Underwriters Laboratories Inc. Carey made many major contributions to new fire suppression technologies and served on various technical advisory committees of the Foundation.
The conference provides an opportunity for fire detection and suppression professionals to share new information, innovations, and plans regarding upcoming research. The emphasis is on real-world application of new documentation in designs, approvals, and codes.
In the paper, the authors describe experiments in which the interaction of a fire plume with a sprinkler spray was directly measured. The shape and height of the fire plume was measured using infrared thermography. By measuring both the fire plume and the spray, the authors were able to quantify the degree of fire suppression based on the fire size and the spray characteristics.
The Fire Protection Research Foundation convenes international research councils to help define fire problems in need of research, conducts research application symposia on a broad range of fire safety issues, and manages broad-based consortium-funded research in collaboration with scientists and laboratories around the world.
