Fire Protection Engineering
Nicholas Alex Dembsey
Associate Professor
Department: Fire Protection Engineering
Professional Page
Office: Higgins Laboratories, 106
Phone: +1-508-831-5971
Fax: +1-508-831-5862
ndembsey@wpi.edu
Educational Background
- B.S.E., University of Michigan
- M.S., University of California at Berkeley
- Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley
- P.E
Research & Teaching Interests
Fire properties of materials via bench-top scale experimentation; compartment fire dynamics via residential scale experimentation, evaluation, development and validation of compartment fire models, performance fire codes, engineering design tools, and engineering forensic tools
Research
Specific Research Topics
Independent Study:
- Development of data acquisition software for bench and residential scale test apparatuses.
- Hardware development for bench and residential scale test apparatuses.
Independent Study/MS Thesis:
- Bench scale evaluation of material system flammability.
- Residential scale evaluation of material system flammability.
- Thermo-mechanical evaluation of materials.
Independent Study/MS Thesis/PhD Dissertation:
-
Develop better understanding of simple and complex material systems' flammability (FRP composites, interior finishes, furniture).
- Evaluation of existing and development of new theories addressing the gas and condensed phases.
- Development of proper test methods for bench, intermediate and large scale.
- Apparatus development for bench and intermediate scale.
- Development of instrumentation for bench, intermediate and large scale experiments.
- Study compartment fire dynamics via residential scale experiments.
- Development, evaluation and validation of models for material flammability and compartment fire dynamics.
- Development of engineering tools for materials flammability characterization and compartment fire dynamics.
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