Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Black PMMA was burned in the cone calorimeter in two orientations (horizontal and vertical), at imposed radiant heat fluxes of (0, 5, 10, 25, 50, and 75) kW/m², and the visual appearance, flame size, heat release rate, and mass loss rate were recorded. Various other experimental parameters were varied. The topography of the burned samples was also recorded, and the heat flux to the sample was inferred from the variation of the mass loss over the surface of the sample. The burning was subsequently modeled using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model, and various experimental, numerical, and physical parameters were varied in the simulations. The results provide an indication of the ability of the fire model to predict the burning of a simple solid sample, and also provide guidance concerning the importance of various experimental and numerical parameters for accurate simulation.