The Firebrand team has been studying light and filters. Check out the image. You’ll see the graph measures intensity versus the shutter speed at one particular ISO setting. Notice the value for red is so large that the green and blue seem negligible. We have a BG-18 filter on order which will reduce the value of the red intensity and create a an even profile of the colors. Once we have an even profile we will be able to distinguish the difference between all three color intensities. In the meantime we are improving our MATLAB program to make it precise.

The Chemical team has been playing with CFAST (Consolidated Fire and Smoke Transport Model) software to create a simulation of a piece of Douglas fir in a wind tunnel. A lot of the team’s time has been spent learning this new software. It’s not too difficult (i.e. dimensioning the wind tunnel, defining the materials, defining the wind, etc.) but the challenging part comes to defining the fuel source and the fire.

Our weekly meetings with our advisors, Professor Dunn Rankin and Dr. Alice Chien, have been very helpful. We really look up to our advisors and the wisdom they share in challenging and refining our ideas. We noticed a recurring theme in their advice to us this past week–“be realistic” and “be practical.” So with the wind tunnel, they suggested perhaps using an existing wind tunnel instead of building another one. They also suggested to the Chemical team reaching out to a CFAST discussion group to get support in learning the material. In terms of testing the camera, they suggested conducting separate tests–one to test the camera’s accuracy in determining velocity and another test to determine temperature (which would make creating a simulation much easier for us).