Burning Behavior at High Applied Heat Flux Levels: Implications for Determination of Material Properties

摘要

A challenge related to characterizing the fire performance of material systems and how to measure true (scaleable) fire properties of these systems is currently faced by the composites industry as well as the fire engineering industry. The growth in the use of fire models to simulate actual scenarios necessitates that fire engineers have material "property" information that is valid. Understanding materials' performance at high heat fluxes allows for insight into determination of scaleable properties as well as providing an opportunity for the composites industry to clearly demonstrate superior performance of its materials. This paper presents results from a recent study conducted in the Advanced Flammability Measurements Apparatus (AFM), which is an enhanced bench scale apparatus similar to Fire Propagation Apparatus ASTM E 2058 and Cone Calorimeter ASTM E 1354, to provide more insight into phenomena associated with horizontal ignition and burning. It builds upon previous work presented at Composites 2004 where burning results were preliminary and not yet distilled. This new work builds upon that and presents significant conclusions for burning behavior and its key "property" heat of gasification. This "property" is found to vary with heat flux level (heating rate) and to be different as compared to the value obtained from differential scanning calorimetry. These results will be detailed and discussed in the context of proper use of these values for indexing of materials as well as in fire modeling.