COMBUSTION OF NON-OPEN-FLAME RESISTANT CANADIAN MATTRESSES IN A ROOM ENVIRONMENT

摘要

This paper presents the results of fire experiments that were conducted with five twin-size mattresses in a well-instrumented room calorimeter so as to evaluate their fire characteristics and select one mattress type that can be used in further experiments involving fully-developed post-flashover fires in realistically furnished residential room settings. The experiments were conducted in a 16 m~2 test room that was designed to represent a medium size residential bedroom and had a 1.5 m x 1.5 m window opening. The mattresses were selected to represent a broad range of solid foam and innerspring designs that are currently available in the Canadian marketplace. In addition to fulfilling the objective of selecting a suitable mattress for the longterm purpose of the project, the experiments provided combustion data obtained under realistic conditions in a room environment, which is valuable for purposes such as computer modelling. The results revealed interesting and varied combustion behaviour with heat release rates ranging from about 1,600 kW to 3,500 kW. The results showed that four of the mattresses tested were capable of causing flashover in the test room, while three of the mattresses produced considerably higher HRRs compared to some of the values found in the literature. For three of the mattresses that produced peak HRRs of about 3,500 kW, the average peak temperatures in the test room exceeded 800°C and the highest peak temperature recorded at a single measurement point was 977°C. The peak heat flux levels at floor level were about 45 kW/m~2 and values exceeded 100 kW/m~2 on the ceiling and walls. The maximum value of optical density measured in the exhaust duct of the calorimeter exceeded 1.5 OD/m in two of the experiments. These results indicate that any of the three mattresses that produced HRRs exceeding 3,000 kW were capable of giving rise to flashover fires with fairly high initial temperatures. On the basis of the results, two mattresses, a solid foam and foam encased pocket coil design, which produced peak heat release rates of 3,400 kW and 3,500 kW, respectively, were selected for further tests with complete sleep sets.