The Character of Burning Residential and Office Items

Published

March 31, 2025

Author(s)

Anthony Hamins, Giovanni Di Cristina Torres, Matthew Bundy, Anthony Chakalis, Marco Fernandez, Ickchan Kim, Selvarajah Ramesh, Mauro Zammarano

Abstract

A series of experiments are reported on the burning behavior of single items and assemblies commonly found in offices and residences, including chairs, sofas, mattresses with pillows and bedclothes, and some miscellaneous items such as laptops, bookshelves, and side tables. The measurements were conducted in the open under quasi-quiescent conditions. The global measurements reported include the transient, peak and total heat release rates, the yields of CO and soot, and the mass loss. The appearance of the fires was captured by video cameras from two orthogonal perspectives. Measurements of the heat flux to the surroundings from the specimens were used to estimate the radiative fraction of the fire. The data generated from the study will be included in the NIST Fire Calorimetry Database (FCD), which will link to this report. The measurement results characterize the global combustion properties of the specimens and offer insight on their burning behavior.

Citation

Technical Note (NIST TN) - 2303

Report Number

2303

NIST Pub Series

Technical Note (NIST TN)

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.2303

Local Download

Keywords

burning rate, commodity fires, fire calorimetry database, furniture fires, heat release rate, radiative emission

Citation

Hamins, A. , Di Cristina Torres, G. , Bundy, M. , Chakalis, A. , Fernandez, M. , Kim, I. , Ramesh, S. and Zammarano, M. (2025), The Character of Burning Residential and Office Items, Technical Note (NIST TN), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.2303, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=958547 (Accessed April 2, 2025)