Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

A full-scale fire performance protocol for the evaluation of school bus seat assemblies was developed. This protocol is based on the results of full-scale testing of end-use seat assemblies and computer fire modeling of the ignition source and burning item(s) in a single compartment enclosure. Tenability criteria were applied to the results of the full-scale tests and computer fire model calculations. The results showed that temperature is a suitable criterion for this application. Toxicity of the decomposition products plays a secondary role in determining occupant survivability. Occupant tenability limits are exceeded for ignition sources over 300 kW, independent of the type of seat assembly. Based on the full-scale test data, computer simulations were conducted to determine which tenability criteria were exceeded in the full-scale tests.