DARPA Drops The Bass To Extinguish Fire

[DeSwiss]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has created a bass cannon that can put out fires with sound.

c|net
by Christopher MacManus
July 16, 2012 4:38 PM PDT


[font color=gray]A thing of the past? (Credit: DARPA)[/font]

Citing a lack of innovation in fire-extinguishing methods over the last 50 years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) last week revealed an ear-buzzing new method for putting out fires: blast it with fine-tuned frequencies.

Officially referred to as "acoustic suppression of flame," this simple yet potentially revolutionary method simply relies on two speakers playing a specific low frequency toward the fire.

The resulting acoustics increase air velocity, making it easier to alter the origin of the fire's combustion, also known as the flame boundary layer.

A DARPA statement says the specific sound "leads to higher fuel vaporization, which widens the flame, but also drops the overall flame temperature. Combustion is disrupted as the same amount of heat is spread over a larger area."

MORE

[XemaSab]

1. .

[jmowreader]

2. They would be better off...

Trying to figure out how to make a water bomber out of a C-5.

There has been a lack of innovation in extinguishing.agents because the ones we have work and our fire products researchers are trying to keep.firefightersalive.

[NBachers]

3. The next generation is a crowd or individual-suspect version that makes people spontaneously combust

Useful for those dessert-fork waving wheelchair outlaws.