- Author
-
Rockett, J. A.
- Title
- Modeling of NBS Mattress Tests with the Harvard Mark V Fire Simulation.
- Coporate
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Journal
-
Fire and Materials,
Vol. 6,
No. 2,
80-95,
June 1982
- Report
-
NBSIR 81-2440,
January 1982,
74 p.
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Keywords
-
fabric flammability
|
fire models
|
fire tests
|
home fires
|
hospitals
|
mattresses
|
nursing homes
|
room fires
- Abstract
- NBS burned eleven mattresses made up with bedding in two different rooms, typical of a residential bedroom and a nursing home patient room, respectively. Seven of the mattresses flamed and burned vigorously, the other four were of a construction or so heavily flame inhibited that they only smoldered. The burning behavior of the seven that flamed was modeled with the Harvard Mark V fire simulation. The experimental burn behavior for tests conducted in one room was well reproduced using only total weight of combustible, surface area and heat of combustion. Smoke production values were found to have little effect on the predicted behavior except for the smoke production itself. Fires in a second room, whose ventilation was intentionally restricted by the configuration of the adjoining space, could not be as well reproduced by the present, single room fire model. During this study several changes were made to the simulation. The most significant change was the inclusion of mixing of the hot, exiting fire gases with the cold incoming air. As a part of this, the inter-layer radiation exchange was reformulated to include the effect of smoke contamination of the lower layer. The reformation of the radiation model had a marked effect on the predicted upper layer gas temperatures, generally improving the quality of the simulation.