- Author
- Babrauskas, V.
- Title
- Flame Fluxes in Opposed-Flow Flame Spread: A Review of the Literature.
- Coporate
- Swedish National Testing Institute, Boras, Sweden
- Report
- SP REPORT 1995:06, 1995, 15 p.
- Keywords
- cone calorimeters | fire tests | flame spread | heat flux | ignition | wood | flame spread rate | lateral ignition
- Identifiers
- LIFT (Lateral Ignition and Flame Spread Test); ignitability; values of phi obtained by Janssens for various wood species; peak flame spread rates for Rohm and Haas PMMA samples (cm s⁻¹); summary of flame flux results from the literature
- Abstract
- For quantitative engineering studies of flame spread, it is important that the heat flux from the flame which occurs during the flame spread process be quantified. A literature search was conducted to determine what is known so far about this heat flux. The study was limited to the opposed-flow flame spread configuration, that is, only for those cases where flame spread is occurring opposite to the wind (natural or forced) direction. Very few studies were found to be reported. The reported data varied widely, even for similar materials under similar spread conditions. Notably, no data at all could be found for the geometry of the so-called LIFT test, ASTM E 1321. This was considered surprising in view of the fact that this is one of the few flame spread tests for which a theory exists. The LIFT theory, however, is expressed by means of an empirical formula for the driving force and does not explicitly quantify the flame heat flux. A need was seen to study experimentally the flame fluxes occurring in the LIFT geometry of flame spread.