Behavior of Charring Solids Under Fire-Level Heat Fluxes.
Behavior of Charring Solids Under Fire-Level Heat
Fluxes.
(140 K)
Milosavljevic, I.; Suuberg, E. M.
NISTIR 5499; September 1994.
National Institute of Standards and Technology. Annual
Conference on Fire Research: Book of Abstracts.
October 17-20, 1994, Gaithersburg, MD, 107-108 pp, 1994.
Sponsor:
National Institute of Standards and Technology,
Gaithersburg, MD
Available from:
National Technical Information Service
Order number: PB95-104964
Keywords:
fire research; solids; charring; heat flux; fire
behavior; thermal diffusion
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.
