Rumel.IO

Depth of Calcification Meter

My senior design project for WMU was a depth of calcification meter. Before I started the project I had no idea what a “Calcification layer” of fire damaged gypsum wallboard was, but after working with it for almost a year I could go in way too much detail for a simple blog post. The basic premise is that when there is a fire the gypsum wallboard (commonly called drywall) is heat damaged, which causes it to undergo a chemical & physical change. This change results in a wildly lower density for the changed area of the wall. When a fire-investigator investigates the root cause of the fire it is helpful to know the depth to which this change has occurred. This depth is used by the fire-investigator to help find the cause of the fire.

In short, our sponsor approached us with the background provided above and asked us to create a prototype device. The best way to show off the results of my team’s work is to read the full report pdf below, but I will also list some YouTube links below for an example of the device working and my team’s presentation. The presentation covers all the important aspects of the project in roughly 15 minutes.

Example of device usage: Depth of Calcification example (YouTube) Presentation: Senior Design Presentation (YouTube)