- Author
- Markstein, G. H. | deRis, J.
- Title
- Flame Spread Along Fuel Edges.
- Coporate
- Factory Mutual Research Corp., Norwood, MA
- Sponsor
- National Bureau of Standards, Washington, DC
- Contract
- NBS-CONTRACT-2-36011
- Book or Conf
- Combustion Institute/Eastern States Section. Fall Meeting, 1974. November 12-13, 1974, Silver Spring, MD, 1-29 p., 1974
- Keywords
- flame spread | fabrics | cotton fabrics | pyrolysis products | textiles | solid fuels | polymethyl methacrylate
- Abstract
- The rate of flame spread along the free upper edge of vertically suspended fabrics was always found to exceed the normal downward spread rate. With a cotton fabric, the edge spread rate Ve normalized by the minimum downward rate [symbol] approximately satisfied the empirical relationship [symbol] where [symbol] is the angle of inclination of the edge with respect to the horizontal direction. A tentative interpretation of this relationship in terms of convective transport of pyrolysis products towards the edge points is proposed. Some data on horizontal edge spread for a variety of cotton and polyester-cotton fabrics are also presented. The downward flame spread [symbol] along vertical edges of wedge-shaped samples of polymethyl methacrylate was found to satisfy the empirical relationship [symbol] where [symbol] is the wedge angle.