Citation

Cleary TG, Ohlemiller TJ, Villa K. Fire Safety J. 1994; 23(1): 79-102.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1994, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A set of upholstered chairs constructed from five different fabric/foam combinations was subjected to a variety of ignition sources suggested by fire statistics. The sources included a cigarette, a small match-like flame, an incandescent lamp, a space heater, and a large flame source (TB 133 ignition source). The tests were performed in a furniture calorimeter where heat release rate and species production rates were obtained. For any chair type, the time to the peak heat release rate depended on the ignition sequence, but the magnitude of the peak did not, within the scatter of the data for any given chair. HAZARD I, the fire hazard assessment method developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), was used to quantify the hazard posed by the different ignition scenarios. Not one of the ignition scenarios examined consistently yielded the greatest potential hazard for all chair types tested when ignition and sustained burning were achieved. No deaths were predicted when a working smoke detector was present. When a detector was not present, the results from the limited number of scenarios considered confirm the importance of a low peak heat release rate and to some extent a slow rate of rise to lessen the hazard of upholstered furniture fires.