Standardising Design Fires ForResidential and Apartment Buildings:Upholstered Furniture Fires

摘要

This purpose of this research was to develop a credible set of furniture design fires forresidential/apartment buildings and determine a methodology for incorporating compartment effects indesign fires. Design fires can be defined using various outputs, the most important being the HRRprofile, and depending on the application the following may also be relevant:· Smoke production rates· Soot yield· Species production rates· Temperature profiles· Visibility· Heat fluxes· Mass loss rate of the fuel· Flame spreadThere were three phases to this project: The first phase of this project was a comprehensive data andliterature review to determine the amount of experimental data available and commonly acceptedburning characteristics for upholstered furniture; armchairs, 2-seater sofas, 3-seater sofas, beds andbedding assemblies, and commonly accepted burning characteristics and compartment effects. A largeproportion of the review provided only qualitative guidance for design fires.In the second phase the data collected during the review was collated and used to quantitativelyanalyse key fire characteristics. These were· peak HRR,· time to peak HRR,· growth rate,· total heat released and· maximum CO/CO2 ratio.A methodology was developed to statistically analyse experimental data using BestFit, and where therewas sufficient data the 98th percentile of the statistical analysis was used as a quantitative guide forfurniture design fires. Similarly, compartment effects were incorporated into the design fires byanalysing and comparing the experimental data from free burn and room burn tests of the samefurniture item. The same statistical analysis was used to determine likely changes in the key firecharacteristics mentioned above.A methodology for determining design fires for upholstered furniture was devised, however the smallnumber of data sets available for analysis meant the quantitative results were only indicative.The third phase was to attempt to model furniture fires using FDS, which determined that at the time ofthis project, FDS was not capable of modelling simple furniture fires accurately. The simulation resultsvaried significantly from the experimental results and a number of limitations were identified. ThereforeFDS should not be used to create design fires using the heat of combustion method, which relies on theusers’ definition of material properties.