Das Laboratorium ist für Experimente in den folgenden Bereichen konstruiert und eingerichtet:

• Versuchsbrände in der Anfangsphase eines Feuers
• Versuche über das Ausbreitungsverhalten von Rauch und Brandgasen unter unterschiedlichen Bedingungen, z.B. Entstehungsbrände mit und ohne Thermik
• Testserien nach verschiedenen genormten Prozeduren
• Das Laboratorium ist nicht als Testlaboratorium für das routinemäßige Testen vorgesehen
  Es ist mit vielen Variationsmöglichkeiten ausgestattet und daher eher für grundsätzliche Untersuchungen geeignet
• Versuche unter NICHTBRAND-Bedingungen, wie z.B. variablen Belüftungsbedingungen oder veränderbarer Raumgeometrie

Optical smoke detectors are designed to detect small concentrations of smoke to ensure a fast and reliable detection of arising fires. Unfortunately the complex task of avoiding false alarms is not completely addressed. In contrast to the well standardized methods for the evaluation of the detection capability of a smoke detector, there is a lack of reproducible and representative test methods concerning the false alarm susceptibility with regard to nuisance aerosols. Even though the standard of optical smoke detectors is very high, false alarms caused by dust and water steam consistently happen. A recent German study says that about 10 % of false alarms are caused by dust and another 10 % are caused by water steam.

According to various statistics, over 40 % of the alarms of automatic fire alarm systems installed in buildings are caused by nuisance aerosols, especially due to dust and water droplets like steam or fog. Due to the higher sensitivity of aircraft fire detectors compared to detectors in buildings, aviation is faced with a false alarm rate of even 100:1.

Against this background the Fire Detection Research Group at the Chair of Communication Systems investigates since many years into new fire detection technologies with reduced false alarm ratio. One outstanding research result is the polarimetric smoke detection technology "POLARISE".