- Author
-
Zinn, B. T.
|
Bankston, C. P.
|
Browner, R. F.
|
Powell, E. A.
|
Joseph, T. K.
|
Pasternak, M.
|
Gardner, R. O.
|
Kailasanath, K.
- Title
- Investigation of the Properties of the Combustion Products Generated by Building Fires. Final Report. October 1, 1977-September 30, 1978.
- Coporate
- Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
- Sponsor
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
-
Final Report,
1978,
135 p.
- Contract
- NBS-GRANT-G8-9003
- Keywords
-
building fires
|
combustion products
|
polystyrene
|
polyvinyl chloride
|
polypropylene
|
polyethylenes
|
polymethyl methacrylate
|
fire tests
|
smoke
|
physical properties
|
weight loss
- Abstract
- This report describes the research conducted under a National Bureau of Standards grant entitled "Investigation of the Properties of the Combustion Products Generated by Building Fires." Samples of five different pure polymers--polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene, polyethylene, and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)--were burned under controlled conditions in order to correlate the smoke characteristics of a polymer with its chemical structure. These five polymers were exposed to a 5 W/cm2 radiant flux under both flaming and nonflaming conditions in a room temperature ventilation gas and under flaming conditions in a heated (200 deg C) ventilation gas. In these tests measurements were made of smoke particle size distributions, total smoke particulate mass generated, smoke mean particle diameter, smoke optical density and sample weight loss. Wide variations in mean particle diameter and optical density were found among the five polymers tested under nonflaming conditions, while much less variation in mean particle diameter was found under flaming conditions. In the flaming tests higher ventilation gas temperatures gave slight increases in mean particle diameter and moderate increases in optical density.