Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The ignition characteristics of corrugated fibreboard (commonly called corrugated cardboard) are of considerable interest in view of its widespread use for packing cases in high stack storage warehouses. Samples of this material have therefore been tested to determine their ease of ignition by thermal radiation. The results have been tabulated and displayed for three thicknesses of material for both spontaneous and pilot ignition and compared with corresponding results for common softwood. The minimum irradiance for pilot ignition was 1.5 W/cm^2 - only slightly below that for European whitewood, but the minimum intensity for spontaneous ignition was about 1.7 W/cm^2, about 1/3 of that for European whitewood.