- Author
-
Babrauskas, V.
- Title
- Cone Calorimeter: A Versatile Bench-Scale Tool for the Evaluation of Fire Properties.
- Coporate
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Book or Conf
- New Technology to Reduce Fire Losses and Costs. October 2-3, 1986,
Elsevier Applied Science Publishers, NY,
Luxembourg,
Grayson, S. J.; Smith, D. A., Editors,
78-87 p.,
1986
- Keywords
-
cone calorimeters
|
oxygen consumption
- Abstract
- The rate of heat release is probably the single most important measure of fire hazard. Until recently, heat release rates in fires could only be measured by direct or indirect caloric methods. For fire testing purposes, the scale required even for bench-scale tests is large enough to have precluded affordable, yet competent calorimeters, having small, well-characterized errors. The application of the oxygen consumption principle has now permitted a new generation of heat release measurement apparatuses to be developed for fire testing purposes. These devices include the Furniture Calorimeter for large-scale measurements, and the Cone Calorimeter for bench-scale. The availability of improved techniques in both scales has permitted predictive correlations to developed, whereby bench-scale techniques are no longer confined to rank ordering specimens, but, rather, are used to predict actual full-scale values of heat release rate. The Cone Calorimeter was also seen as a suitable combustor to be used in making other fire hazard measurements. Thus, techniques have been developed for making measurements of ignitability, smoke obscuration, soot production, and the generation of toxic gas species. The promise is also held forth that properties descriptive of flame spread behavior may be simultaneously obtained.