Quantitative understanding of the processes that take place inside a burning material is critical for the prediction of ignition and growth of fires. To improve this understanding and enable predictive modeling, we developed a numerical pyrolysis solver called ThermaKin. This solver computes transient rate of gaseous fuel production from fundamental physical and chemical properties of constituents of a pyrolyzing solid. It was successfully applied to the simulation of combustion of a broad range of materials. One limitation of ThermaKin was that it could handle only one-dimensional burning problems. As a consequence, flame spread, which is an important contributor to fire growth, could not be simulated. Here, we present a new computational tool, ThermaKin2D, that expands ThermaKin model to two dimensions and combines it with a flexible analytical representation of a surface flame. It is our expectation that this tool will enable highly accurate simulations of flame spread dynamics. This manuscript contains a description of this new computation tool, reports results of a series of verification exercises, and demonstrates some of the ThermaKin2D's capabilities. Published 2013. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.
Herein, we describe a reduced-scale test ("Cube" test), measuring the fire performance of specimens including a fire barrier (FB) and a flammable core material, which acts as the main fuel load. The specimen is intended to reproduce a cross-section of a composite product where heat/mass transfer occurs primarily in a direction perpendicular to the FB. The Cube test procedure and benefits are discussed in this work by adopting residential upholstery furniture as an exemplary study. One flexible polyurethane foam, one polypropylene cover fabric, and 10 commercially available FBs were selected. They were used to compare the fire performance of FBs, measured in terms of peak of heat release rate, in the ASTM E1474-14 standard test and the newly developed Cube test. Edge effects severely affected the performance of FBs in the ASTM E1474-14 standard test but not in the Cube test. Furthermore, appropriate test conditions were determined in the Cube test to measure the so-called "wetting point," that is, the time and value of heat release rate measured when flammable liquid products were first observed on the bottom of the specimen. The relevance of the "wetting point" in terms of full-scale fire performance and failure mechanism of FBs is discussed.
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