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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday August 11 2018, @07:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the making-smores dept.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used a laser detection and ranging (LADAR) system to image three-dimensional (3-D) objects melting in flames. The method could offer a precise, safe and compact way to measure structures as they collapse in fires.

Optical range measurements, already used in manufacturing and other fields, may help overcome practical challenges posed by structural fires, which are too hot to measure with conventional electromechanical sensors mounted on buildings.

As described in Optica, the NIST demonstration used a commercial LADAR system to map distances to objects melting behind flames that produced varying amounts of soot. The experiment measured 3-D surfaces with a precision of 30 micrometers (millionths of a meter) or better from 2 meters away. This level of precision meets requirements for most structural fire research applications, according to the paper.

[...] LADAR offers several advantages as a tool for imaging through flames. The technique is very sensitive and is able to image objects even when small amounts of soot are present in the flames. The method also works at a distance, from far enough away that the equipment is safe from the intense heat of a fire. In addition, the instrument can be compact and portable, relying on fiber optics and simple photodetectors.

[...] The researchers successfully applied LADAR to measure and map 3-D "point clouds"—points are the "voxels" constituting an image—even in a turbulent fire environment with strong signal scattering and distortion. For comparison, the team also made videos of the chocolate as it melted and images of a more complex plastic skeleton.

[...] The initial experiments were conducted with flames just 50 millimeters wide on lab burners at the University of Colorado Boulder. The preliminary results suggest that the LADAR technique could be applied to larger objects and fires. The NIST team now plans to scale up the experiment, first to make 3-D images of objects through flames about 1 meter wide and, if that works, to make quantitative observations of larger structural fires.


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  • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday August 11 2018, @08:43AM (1 child)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Saturday August 11 2018, @08:43AM (#720259) Homepage Journal

    You know, the World Trade Center was always known as a very very strong building. Don’t forget, that took a big bomb in the basement. Now, the basement is the most vulnerable place because that’s your foundation and it withstood that and I got to see that area about three or four days after took place because one of my structural engineers actually took me for a tour because he did the building and I said “I can’t believe it”. The building was standing solid and half of the columns were blown out. So, this was an unbelievably powerful building. If you don’t know anything about structure, it was one of the first buildings that was built from the outside. The steel, the reason the World Trade Center had such narrow windows is that in between all the windows, you had the steel on the outside, the steel on the outside of the building.

    That’s why when I first looked -- and you had big heavy i-beams. When I first looked at it, I couldn’t believe it, because there was a hole in the steel and this is steel that was, you remember the width of the windows of the World Trade Center, folks. I think you know if you were ever up there, they were quite narrow and in between was this heavy steel. I said how could a plane, even a plane, even a 767 or 747 or whatever it might have been, how could it possibly go through this steel? I happen to think that they had not only a plane but they had bombs that exploded almost simultaneously, because I just can’t imagine anything being able to go through that wall. Most buildings are built with the steel is the inside around the elevator shaft. This one was built from the outside, which is the strongest structure you can have, and it was almost just like a can of soup.

    I just think that it was a plane with more than just fuel. I think obviously they were very big planes, they were going very rapidly, because I was also watching where the plane seemed to be not only going fast, it seemed to be coming down into the building. So it's getting the speed from going downhill, so to speak. It just seemed to me that to do that kind of destruction is even more than a big plane because you’re talking about talking about steel, the heaviest caliber steel that was used on the building. These buildings were rock solid and you know it’s just an amazing amazing thing. This country is different today and it’s going to be different than it ever was for many years to come.

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  • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 11 2018, @09:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 11 2018, @09:37AM (#720270)

    just... imagine anything... fuel... because... watching... the... seemed... only... fast... steel...

    (caliber... that... amazing... This... | amazing... different... many years...)