This guide provides assistance for planning room fire tests. The object of each experiment is to evaluate the role of a material, product, or system in the fire growth within one or more compartments.
The relationship between laboratory fire test methods and actual room fires can be investigated by the use of full-scale and reduced-scale experiments. This guide is aimed at establishing a basis for conducting full-scale experiments for the study of room fire growth.
Room fire tests can be placed into four main categories: reconstruction, simulation, research and standardization.
Reconstruction room fire tests are full scale replicates of a fire scene with the geometry, materials, contents, and ignition source intended to duplicate a particular scenario. The usual purpose of such a test is to evaluate what happened or what might happen in such a scenario.
Simulation room fire tests are comparable to reconstruction fire tests, except that not all of the parameters are duplicated. A simulated fire test is one in which one or more components of a fire scenario are altered, usually in order to facilitate conducting the test. The compartment design must carefully address geometry and materials of construction to ensure that they do not significantly alter the fire response. Reconstruction and simulation fire tests often have a distinctive objective, such as time to flashover, that is related to the nature of the original fire scene.
Research room fire tests are conducted in order to elucidate the effects of one or more of the following: geometry, materials, placement of items, ventilation, or other parameters. The measured effects (such as room temperature, heat flux, heat release rate, time to flashover, post flashover conditions) are chosen to provide the most useful information.
Standardization room fire tests include scenarios that have been adopted by a standardization body. In this case, the compartment, ignition source, instrumentation and the nature of the contents are specified. The purpose of such a test is often the evaluation of a specific fire test response parameter. Simplified geometries and materials of construction are selected, party because the compartment is intended to be used repeatedly. Either simulated or actual commercial test objects are specified. The geometry of the compartment is generally specified to allow well-ventilated burning of the contents, with minimal radiative feedback, and to permit observation of flame spread. In most standardized fire tests, flashover is a termination point for the test.
In all cases, the room lining materials should be chosen carefully. Short duration fire response tests that do not reach flashover may be less affected by lining materials than longer duration fire tests that are intended to go to flashover. The thermal properties of the lining material (emissivity, thermal conductivity, thermal inertia) should be considered. The three main variables in compartment design must be considered for any of the types of room size fire tests: ventilation, geometry, and compartment materials (see Section 6).
1.1 This guide addresses means of conducting full-scale fire experiments that evaluate the fire-test-response characteristics of materials, products, or assemblies under actual fire conditions.
1.2 It is intended as a guide for the design of the experiment and for the use and interpretation of its results. The guide is also useful for establishing laboratory conditions that simulate a given set of fire conditions to the greatest extent possible.
1.3 This guide allows users to obtain fire-test-response characteristics of materials, products, or assemblies, which are useful data for describing or appraising their fire performance under actual fire conditions.
1.3.1 The results of experiments conducted in accordance with this guide are also usefu......
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