An agency within the United States Department of Commerce, Technology Administration
Click here to return to selection list
The Building and Fire Research Laboratory (BFRL) at the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), as well as its predecessor organization (National Bureau of Standards), has been contributing to the scientific knowledge of fires, buildings and a host of related topics for decades. BFRL produced a range of reports starting in the late 1930s that became basis documents for many of the standardized tests in use today. Since then, BFRL has published many groundbreaking reports and analyses, as well as providing input to documents produced by other agencies. The documents below are being provided to the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) via an exclusive agreement with NIST.
NIST researchers and engineers have contributed to the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering and other texts, and many are members of or contributors to the Educational and Scientific Foundation. NIST personnel have authored articles in SFPE documents ranging from Technology Reports to the Journal of Fire Protection Engineering.
Document
Download
Full-Scale Residential Occupancy Fire Tests of 1939 (6.4 MB)
Building Materials and Structures: Fire-Resistance Classifications of Building Materials [1942] (20.0 MB)
Determination of the Self-Ignition Temperature of Combustible Liquids [1952] (4.9 MB)
Preliminary Experiments with a Radiant Panel Flame-Spread Test Method [1954] (1.3 MB)