Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

A very simple empirical relationship has been found for predicting the time to flashover in a full-scale room fire test for surface lining materials. It is based on bench-scale measurements of rate of heat release in the cone calorimeter. The relation also includes the time to ignition and the density of the linings. Where T is time to flashover in full scale, t is time to ignition in small scale at 25 kW/m², A is heat release during peak period at 50 kw/m², r is density, a and b are constants. It is valid for the eleven different surface linings which caused flashover. They included both fully combustible and essentially non-combustible materials, with or without thin surface coverings. Two linings did not cause flashover and can not be directly correlated, but their small-scale data indicate longer times to flashover than for the other lining materials. However, the application of the relationship for other surface materials or other full-scale fire scenarios has not yet been investigated.