Resilient materials

News and Updates

Groups of people sit or lie in a parking lot surrounded by low buildings as fires burn in the forest beyond.

NIST Issues New Guidance for Emergency Response During Wildfires

August 23, 2023

Lessons learned from the 2018 Camp Fire in California include strategies for protecting lives when there is not enough time to safely evacuate all residents.

Diagram shows microprojectile as a small ball moving upward through a square of polymer film with camera to the right.

New Laser-Based Method Could Help Scientists Discover New Puncture-Resistant Materials

July 3, 2023

Using tiny laser-launched projectiles and troves of data, scientists can more quickly bridge the gap between a material’s microscopic properties and its real

Photo shows a NIST firefighter on standby watching a shed burn next to a target structure representing a wall of a residence during an experiment.

For Sheds in Wildfire Zones, NIST Researchers Determine How Close Is Too Close to Home

June 1, 2023

How far away do sheds need to be located to significantly limit fire spread to homes? New research led by NIST has begun to provide important answers.

Projects and Programs

Functional Recovery of Buildings and Lifelines

Ongoing

Objective The Functional Recovery project is designed to improve the time for recovery of key social functions by strengthening the built environment to withstand earthquake impacts. Our efforts will advance measurement science for the assessment and design of buildings and lifelines, contribute in

Risk Evaluation and Mitigation

Ongoing

Objective This project aims to improve techniques currently used for risk evaluation (including uncertainty quantification) and mitigation (including FRP retrofit) of structural systems and integrate them within the PBEE framework. The first phase of the project is focused on the development and

Quantification of Material, Loading, and Modeling Uncertainties of Reinforced Concrete Column Components and Frame Systems under Seismic and Gravity Loads for Use in PBSE

Completed

Objective - To quantify the influences of uncertainties in material properties, loads, and modeling techniques on the performance of reinforced concrete column components and frame systems under lateral seismic and axial loads from gravity. The results of this study will be integrated with the

Publications

Workshop on Decarbonization: A Gap Analysis of LCA Standards for Industry

September 20, 2024

Author(s)

Noah Last, Joshua D. Kneifel, Amy Costello, Catherine Houska, Katherine Morris

ASTM International's committee on sustainability (E60), in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), hosted the virtual

Major to Trace Element Imaging and Analysis of Iron Age Glasses Using Stage Scanning in The Analytical Dual Beam Microscope (Tandem)

June 16, 2022

Author(s)

Edward P. Vicenzi, Thomas Lam, Jamie Weaver, Andrew Herzing, John McCloy, Rolf Sjöblom, Carolyn Pearce

Dark and clear silicate glasses formed during an iron age vitrification event ≈ 1500 years ago at the Broborg hillfort near Uppsala, Sweden have been analyzed

Microbial interactions with silicate glasses

July 17, 2021

Author(s)

Jamie Weaver, Carolyn Pearce, Robert Koestler, Bruce Arey, Albert Kruger, Paula DePriest, Andrew Plymale

Glass alteration in the presence of microorganisms has been a topic of research for over 150 years. Researchers from a variety of disciplines, including

Graphene/Polymer Nanocomposite Degradation by Ultraviolet Light: The Effects of Graphene Nanofillers and their Potential for Release

September 10, 2020

Author(s)

David Goodwin, Shih Jia Shen, Ronald S. Lankone, Wendel Wohlleben, Tinh Nguyen, Li Piin Sung, Francois Perreault, Ana Barrios

The ultraviolet (UV)-induced degradation of graphene/polymer nanocomposites was investigated in this study. Specifically, the effect of few-layer graphene