Joel Sipe

Dr. Sipe is a Principal Engineer in Exponent's Thermal Sciences practice. He specializes in providing origin and cause determinations for fires and explosions, evaluating the fire performance of materials and products, analyzing the performance of fire protection engineering systems, performing building and fire code assessments, performing computer fire modeling, and providing technical consulting services to natural gas pipeline operators and gas and electric utilities. 

Dr. Sipe is actively involved in the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) code making process. He performs origin and cause determinations of fires, explosions, and other thermal events. He has performed structure fire investigations involving residential, industrial, commercial, and storage occupancies; marine fire investigations involving product tankers, container ships, and recreational ships; vehicle fire investigations involving limousines, heavy equipment, electric bikes, and off road vehicles; and wildland fire investigations.

Dr. Sipe has experience developing and performing fire tests, including tests in accordance with standard test methods such as those published by the ASTM, NFPA, ISO, UL, API, and CFR as well as customized experimental fire test procedures. He has experience evaluating the ignition and fire performance of industrial and consumer products and various materials under a wide range of failure conditions. He has experience evaluating flame resistant fabrics and personal protective equipment (PPE), including firefighter ensembles, and evaluating scald burns and thermal injuries from fires and molten metals. Dr. Sipe has provided expert witness testimony regarding fire dynamics and flame spread.

Dr. Sipe analyzes active and passive building fire protection and life safety systems, including wet and dry pipe sprinkler systems, commercial cooking fire protection, wet and dry chemical systems, gaseous fire protection systems, structural fire protection, and fire alarm systems. He has experience investigating sprinkler freezing events and inadvertent sprinkler operations. He has experience performing building and fire code evaluations for compliance with codes and standards published by the NFPA and International Code Council (ICC). He has experience performing building code evaluations of railway stations, and has testified on such matters in international arbitration proceedings. He has performed dust explosion hazard calculations for industrial facilities. Dr. Sipe has experience solving complex fire-related problems by developing computer modeling solutions. He also has experience using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, such as Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) and Fluent, and computer zone models, such as the Consolidated Model of Fire and Smoke Transport (CFAST). He has experience instructing graduate students on the proper use of the computer fire models FDS and CFAST, and teaching the development and implementation of customized computer fire models. Dr. Sipe has experience performing code assessments of facilities that assemble, test, and store lithium ion battery packs for vehicle applications.

Dr. Sipe has experience providing technical consulting services to gas and electric utilities. He has experience consulting on natural gas pipeline safety and integrity management issues including a multi-year effort to assist a large gas and electric utility to validate the maximum allowable operating pressure (MAOP) of its gas pipelines. He has experience with the development of pipeline features lists (PFLs), quality control methods for ensuring database accuracy, and evaluating methods for resolving unknown pipeline features. He has investigated and provided engineering assessments for natural gas transmission pipeline ruptures, residential house explosions associated with natural gas pipeline leaks, subsurface gas migration, and arc flash events. He consults with the oil and gas industry on pipeline asset management including geographical information systems for pipeline data. He has also performed wildland fire investigations for electric utilities.

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Sipe was a research assistant and teaching assistant at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). At WPI, he conducted research to investigate the effects of fire sprinkler wetting by means of a numerical model for heat and mass transfer in porous media, and experimental validation using the cone calorimeter. He also conducted research, sponsored by the U.S. Navy, to investigate the performance of firefighter's protective clothing through the design and fabrication of heat flux transducers and the development of skin burn prediction algorithms for an instrumented mannequin test. As a teaching assistant at WPI, Dr. Sipe instructed graduate students on topics that included fire protection systems, fire detection, and fire dynamics.