- Author
- Dietenberger, M. A.
- Title
- Mathematical Modeling of Furniture Fires. Interim Report. October 1985.
- Coporate
- Dayton Univ., OH
- Sponsor
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
- NBS GCR 86-506, February 1986, 74 p.
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Contract
- NBS-GRANT-NB83NADA4056
- Keywords
- burning rate | flame spread | furniture | heat release rate | fire models | upholstered furniture | room fires
- Abstract
- The objective of this work was to develop a working computer model of a furniture fire which utilizes the bench scale measurements on furniture samples of burning rate history, flame spread rate, time to ignition, and the fraction of fuel converted to soot. The primary prediction of the model was to be the burning rate of a furniture fire as a function of time. The approach was to design modular submodels that are simple, accurate, and highly coupled. This reearch has concentrated in three areas: (1) Crucial to allowing a full modularity of submodels was the development of a practical three-dimensional greybody radiation model of the flames and the furniture. (2) The analytical models of the time to ignition and of the flame spread rate were developed to adequately describe the corresponding bench scale measurements and also to be suitable for use in the furniture fire model. (3) A furniture fire demonstrator model was developed to combine various submodels to compute the burning rate of a furniture fire as a function of time. The main purpose of the demonstrator model was to verify the numerical schemes utilized.