- Author
-
Sheppard, D. T.
- Title
- Test Method for the Determination of Temperature Dependent Thermal Properties of Fire Insulation Materials.
- Coporate
- Worcester Polytechnic Inst., MA
- Report
-
Thesis,
November 1992,
183 p.
- Keywords
-
insulation
|
test methods
|
thermal properties
|
fire resistant materials
|
temperature
|
equations
|
heat transfer
|
thermocouples
|
experiments
|
thermal conductivity
|
thermal diffusivity
- Identifiers
- radiant heat source
- Abstract
- In the fire protection field, it is becoming possible to replace full size fire resistance testing with computer modeling. This emerging technology has many advantages, including the possibility of being much less expensive than large scale tests. Unfortunately, present methods for determining the physical material properties on which the computer results are based are both expensive and time consuming. The objective of this work was to develop a new method for determining the thermal properties of fire resistive materials at the temperatures produced by a fire. Since these properties change with temperature, a method had to be developed which would quantify the temperature dependency. Using theory based on the transient heat transfer equation, a test mehod was developed which consists of a small scale test using a radiant heat source and thermocouples embedded within a test sample. The experimental temperature histories of the thermocouples are evaluated after the experimental test using a least squares method. The result of the least squares analysis is a linear relationship with respect to temperature for the thermal conductivity and volumetric specific heat and a non temperature dependent value of the thermal diffusivity. The validity of the test method was evaluated in two ways: (1) a comparison of the analytical method was made with a theoretically ideal solution, and (2) a material with known thermal properties was tested. The theoretical comparison was able to exactly predict the thermal properties. The experimental comparison was able to provide a ballpark comparison of the temperature dependent thermal properties and a close comparison with the constant thermal conductivity. These results show that the analytical method is sound, but work must be done to improve the experimental method.