- Author
-
Budnick, E. K.
- Title
- Interior Finish as a Potential Fire Safety Engineering Design Parameter in Mobile Home Construction. Technology Report.
- Coporate
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Sponsor
- Department of Housing and Urban Development, Washington, DC
- Report
-
SFPE TR 77-04
1977
23 p.
- Book or Conf
- Society of Fire Protection Engineers. Engineering an End to Residential Life Loss Seminar. May 17, 1977,
Washington, DC,
1977
- Keywords
-
mobile homes
|
construction
|
fire safety
|
flame spread
|
interior finishes
|
design applications
|
tunnel tests
|
fire growth
|
fire tests
- Abstract
- The ongoing Mobile Home Fire Safety project at the National Bureau of Standards is directed at providing qualitative guidelines for fire safety in mobile home design and construction. Full-scale fire testing, predicated on major mobile home fire incident scenarios, has been utilized extensively to demonstrate the effects on fire development resulting from changes in key design parameters such as the interior finish materials used on walls and the ceiling. The paper discusses a limited amount of experimental data collected during these full-scale fire tests. In addition the qualitative usefulness of the ASTM E-84 Tunnel Test is examined as a basis for fire safety requirements for interior finish materials. While these results are based on a limited range of materials it appears that the ASTM E-84 flame spread classification may provide an indication of the potential hazard. The results indicate that the fire properties of the interior finish materials can significantly affect the rate of fire growth and maximum severity from an incidental fire in the living room of a typical single-wide mobile home. This in turn directly impacts the level of property damage, and adversely affects life safety.