- Author
- Quintiere, J. G. | Rhodes, B. T.
- Title
- Fire Growth Models for Materials. Final Report. June 1992-December 1993.
- Coporate
- Maryland Univ., College Park
- Sponsor
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
- NIST GCR 94-647, June 1994, 49 p.
- Contract
- NIST-GRANT-60NANB2D1266
- Keywords
- fire growth | burning rate | cone calorimeters | fire models | heat flux | ignition | pigments | polymethyl methacrylate | small scale fire tests
- Abstract
- Ignition and burning rate data have been developed for thick (25 mm.) black Polycast PMMA in a Cone Calorimeter heating assembly. The objective was to establish a testing protocol that would lead to the prediction of ignition and burning rate from Cone data. This has been done for a thermoplastic like PMMA. For black PMMA we measured ignition temperatures of 250 to 350 C and vaporization temperatures of approximately 325 to 380 C over irradiance levels of 15 to 60 kW/m2. The incident flame heat flux, for irradiation levels of 0 to 75 kW/m2, was found to be approximately 37 kW/m2 for black PMMA. Its constancy has been show due to the geometry of the Cone flame. Also, this flame can be shown to be nearly transparent for Cone irradiance (greater than 90 percent). The heat of gasification of the black PMMA used was found to be approximately 2.8 kJ/g: higher than other values reported for PMMA. This is believed to be due to differences in molecular structure or pigmentation effects and the types of PMMA tested. A burning rate model was demonstrated to yield good accuracy (greater than 80 percent) in comparison to measured transient values.