Evaluation of the RDD-Measuring Technique: RDD-Tests of the CEA and FMRC StandardPlastic Commodities

摘要

Required Delivered Density (RDD) is a measure of a particular hazard'ssuppressability and can be defined as the delivered density required to achieve fire suppression. The value of RDD depends on the fire intensity at the time of the application of water. Factory Mutual Research Corporation (FMRC) in USA developed the technique of measuring RDD and has found the test method to be very useful. The main goal of the project reported here has been to evaluate the technique. A complete RDD measuring equipment similar to that of FMRC has been built at the Swedish National Testing and Research Institute (SP) including a Fire Products Collector (FPC) capable of measuring heat release in the MW range. In total, 23 RDD-tests have been conducted using six different commodities; the FMRC Standard plastic commodity, a commodity used by CEA (Committee European des Assurance), two similar Swedish commodities and two real industrial commodities. In order to study the reproducibility of the method, some identical test commodities have been tested both at FMRC and SP. The test results show that the RDD-technique provides valuable quantative measurements with good repeatability and reproducibility. The tests are relatively inexpensive to conduct compared with full-scale tests and therefore the technique may in the future be a base for classification of commodities and storage configurations in sprinkler installation rules. Thereby reliable and cost-effective sprinkler systems may be designed.