Appliance Analysis Findings - Newsletter

April 2009

Last month was the 2009 MNIAAI Annual Seminar in St Cloud Minnesota. I was pleased to see so many people there - and even more pleased to see the quality of the programming.

If you did not attend the conference, this only a small portion of what you missed:

• Negative Corpus: How do you prove that something cannot or did not happen?
• Negative Proof: Attempt to prove something cannot or did not happen.
• Ignition Event: How to track the specific trigger that led to an incident.

I was particularly interested in the idea of the ignition event. For example, you might start with a Dryer fire. The dryer fire starts with a drum fire, so you have to ask a few questions. The example below will show how that can lead to a chain of answers that lead to the ignition event.

Was dryer operating or not at the time of the fire? Was there clothes in the drum? What type of material was being dried? Was the lint filter plugged? Is the venting plugged? Was there a pile of clothes along side of the dryer? Any air restrictions around the dryer? Check the gas supply and gas carrying devices. Check the electrical supply and the internal dryer electrical components. Electrical supply and electric dryer components