Citation

Rhodes BT, Quintiere JG. Fire Safety J. 1996; 26(3): 221-240.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Ignition and burning rate data are developed for thick (25 mm) black Polycast PMMA in a cone calorimeter heating assembly. The objective is to establish a testing protocol that will lead to the prediction of ignition and burning rate from cone data. This is done for a thermoplastic like PMMA. The incident flame heat flux, for irradiation levels of 0-75 kW/m2, is found to be approximately 37 kW/m2 for black PMMA. Its constancy is shown due to the geometry of the cone flame. Also, this flame is shown to be nearly transparent for cone irradiance ( greater than 90%). The heat of gasification of the black PMMA used is found to be approximately 2.8 kJ/g; higher than values reported for other PMMA samples. This is believed to be due to differences in molecular structure or pigmentation of the PMMA tested. A burning rate model is demonstrated to yield good accuracy in comparison to measured transient values. An exact solution is found for constant heat flux conditions.