Citation

Hopkins J, Quintiere JG. Fire Safety J. 1996; 26(3): 241-268.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Ignition and burning rate data are developed for nylon 6/6, polyethylene, polypropylene and black polycast PMMA in a cone calorimeter heating assembly. The objective is to examine a testing protocol that leads to the prediction of ignition and burning rate for thermoplastics from cone calorimeter data. The procedure consists of determining material properties, i.e. thermal inertia, specific heat, thermal conductivity, ignition temperature, heat of gasification and flame heat flux from cone data, and utilizing these properties in a model to predict the time to ignition and transient burning rate. The procedure is based on the incident flame heat flux being constant in the cone calorimeter which occurs for flames above the top of the cone heater. A constant net flame heat flux of approximately 20 kW/m2 for nylon 6/6, 19 kW/m2 for polyethylene, 11 kW/mP2 for polypropylene and 28 kW/m2 for black PMMA is obtained for irradiation levels ranging from 0 to 90 kW/m2. The burning rate model is shown to yield good accuracy in comparison to measured transient burning in the cone assembly.