Behavior of Charring Solids Under Fire-Level Heat Fluxes.

Published

October 17, 1994

Author(s)

I Milosavljevic, E M. Suuberg

Abstract

It has recently been argued in the fire research community that the ability to quantitatively describe flame spread over combustible solids has reached the point at which our understanding of the complexity of the solid phase processes is limiting. Often the processes occurring in the solid are modeled by simple thermal diffusion in a solid (with ill-defined thermal properties) together with a crude empirical decomposition rate law. A critically important parameter-release rate of combustibles into the vapor phase-often becomes little more than an adjustable parameter, as decomposition rates, products of pyrolysis and solids thermal properties under relevant conditions are only approximately known. This is particularly so in the practically important case of charring solids such as wood and other cellulosics. As a result, it is difficult to claim that a truly critical testing of combustion models for bulk, charring solids has ever been possible. This communication addresses some issues related to this problem.

Proceedings Title

National Institute of Standards and Technology. Annual Conference on Fire Research: Book of Abstracts.

Conference Dates

October 17-20, 1994

Conference Location

Gaithersburg, MD

Pub Type

Conferences

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Local Download

Keywords

fire research, solids, charring, heat flux, fire behavior, thermal diffusion

Citation

Milosavljevic, I. and Suuberg, E. (1994), Behavior of Charring Solids Under Fire-Level Heat Fluxes., National Institute of Standards and Technology. Annual Conference on Fire Research: Book of Abstracts., Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=916777 (Accessed October 31, 2024)