AN APPROACH FOR EVALUATION OF MATERIAL FLAMMABILITY VIA BENCH-SCALE TESTING AND CFD SIMULATIONS

摘要

Numerous medium- and large-scale international and national tests have been developed and usedto characterize flammability of various plastics and/or construction materials. These tests differ in manyobjectives and details including providing certification by regulatory bodies for various end users. Themajor division in outcomes of these tests is the characterization of the ability of the tested material tosupport flame spread in certain test geometries. Many of these tests are expensive and require largeamount of materials and time There have been numerous efforts to develop empirical correlations and/orengineering models that utilize bench-scale test data to predict flame propagating or non-propagatingbehavior in medium- and large-scale tests. An example is the ANSI/FM Approvals 4910 test protocol forcleanroom materials that continues to serve as a reliable guide for the development of a new generation offire resistant materials. This paper discusses a novel approach for the characterization of materialflammability. The approach is based on the extraction of a special set of effective material properties frombench-scale experimental data. These properties are then used in CFD simulations of flame spread inintermediate-scale flammability tests. It is shown that this approach is able to predict propagating andnon-propagating flame behavior. While additional experimental and numerical studies are ongoing tofurther develop and substantiate these findings, this new approach is promising as a cost and timeeffective alternative to large-scale testing, as well as being intrinsically flexible to address a range offlame spread geometries typical of various end uses.