- Author
-
Ames, S.
|
Parker, W. J.
- Title
- Heat Release and Furniture.
- Coporate
- Fire Research Station, Borehamwood, England
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Book or Conf
- Interscience Communications Limited. Heat Release and Fire Hazard. 1st U. S. Symposium. Abstracts. December 1991,
San Diego, CA,
14 p.,
1991
- Keywords
-
heat release
|
fire hazard
|
furniture
|
heat release rate
|
rooms
|
furniture calorimeters
|
fire behavior
|
upholstery
- Abstract
- Over recent years there has been growing interest in the use of rate of heat release measurement to provide meaningful information about the burning characteristics of furniture. Studies are being actively undertaken in several countries and, research is now focusing on a small number of clearly defined techniques. In the United States, a full scale room fire test (Cal 133) has been used to assess and to select upholstered seating for many years. Previously, in the last specification, heat release was not measured directly and air temperature measurements were used to indicate the deterioration of conditions in a room environment arising from the release of heat. Recent work at NIST has shown a correlation between these measurements and rate of heat release measurements obtained using a furniture calorimeter. The test specification has now been modified to include an option permitting the requirements to be met by furniture calorimeter measurements. In parallel with this, work in the UK at FRS has explored the use of a standard calorimeter test developed in Sweden for furniture. Specimens, ignition source, apparatus design and test procedure were all similar to those used in the NIST studies. In addition, both programmes involved comparison between full scale rate of heat release measurements and those obtained from bench scale cone calorimetry. Particular attention was paid to peak rate of heat release comparison and the limiting condition where little or not fire growth was observed at full scale.