Repeat Fire Tests of Upholstered Furniture: Variability and Experimental Observations

Abstract

A series of trials were conducted to investigate the repeatability of furniture-scale calorimetry experiments. Twenty-five identical upholstered chairs were ignited under the same experimental conditions. Experimental results of heat release rate (HRR), mass loss rate (MLR), and emission yields (CO, CO2, N2O, NO, CH4, HCN) are presented. Discrepancies were observed between the time resolved evolution of the various recorded data. However the development of each fire was observed to be tied to common events. By accounting for these events, a more consistent representation of the burning behaviour can be expressed. Each experiment displayed distinct burning regimes (i.e., pyrolysis, flaming, and smouldering) which were identified through visual observation and through analysing the emission data. Some species yields were found to be approximately constant over some burning regimes (e.g., CO2 yield over the flaming regime) while others displayed highly transient behaviour (e.g., CO yield was found to be burning regime dependent). Results from upholstered furniture scale experiments, including HRR and emission yields, are commonly used in various engineering applications; this study lends insight into the variability that can be observed for such data and the implications in applying this data in further analysis.