Fire Protection Engineering Department

This course teaches students of different technical disciplines the fundamentals of fire protection engineering including combustion chemistry, fire behavior, compartment fire dynamics, toxicity, human behavior in fire, and fire modelling. Students have an opportunity to conduct and view fire experiments in both the WPI Fire Safety Engineering and the WPI Fire Fundamentals laboratories. Fire models are used to aid in use of the scientific method to determine cause and origin of a fire. This course is intended for both majors and non-majors as an introduction into Fire Protection Engineering (FPE) and how engineering knowledge can be used to save lives and property around the world.

This course introduces principles and applications of building fire safety design. Topics include the interaction between fire, the building, and building occupants; systems that are used to detect, suppress, and control the spread of fire; and systems that facilitate the safe evacuation of occupants during fire. Building code requirements and engineering methods for analysis and design of building fire safety systems will be explored. 

This course will cover experimental methods used in fire research as well as other thermal-fluid topic areas. Students will learn fundamentals of metrology (calibration, sensor response constraints, uncertainty quantification), standard tests in fire research (i.e. cone calorimeter, fire propagation apparatus, etc.), as well as other measurement methods (thermocouples, heat flux gauges, velocimetry, thermometry, etc.). Students will also learn design of experiments and conduct a large-scale experiment in the UL performance lab.

As the pace of development increases around the world, fire prevention and control are becoming more vital for individuals, organizations, and society itself. This course introduces students to the fundamental concepts of fire risk and sustainability along with related multi-disciplinary topics such as economics, human behavior, and decision-making. The process of fire risk assessment is taught and applied to the built environment and to the wildland fire problem. Students will undertake a structured applied-research project (individually or in small groups) to develop sustainable solutions at the interface of fire and a chosen area of sustainability such as climate change, safe drinking water, public health, housing, and more.