Using Modified Cone Calorimeter to Determine Heat/moisture Transport Properties and Pyrolysis/combustion Properties of Wood-based Materials for Use in Cfd Models

The trend towards performance-based codes for achieving acceptable fire safety creates a significant demand for improved material properties and computer fire models. The performance-based engineering analysis is very difficult to achieve for wood-based materials because of their complex physical processes for pyrolysis and combustion. To address this need the cone calorimeter (ASTM E1354) was modified to be the primary test method for deriving properties of (1) heat/moisture transport, (2) mechanistic kinetics of pyrolysis, (3) surface ignition and creeping flame spread, and (4) combustion emission characteristics for the tested material. Each of these four major properties required a unique sample holder for revealing the targeted properties, with a corresponding mathematical analysis. With these four separate tests, using samples cut out from the same block of wood, the algorithms for drying, ignition, flame spread, pyrolysis and combustion can be incorporated into Computational Fluid Dynamics codes (CFDs) to predict larger scale behavior for the particular material.