Fire behaviour of selected polymeric materials : Numerical modelling and validation using microscale and bench scale test methods

Abstract: The ability to predict fire behaviour of materials is of key interest to building materials industry. Themain reason for it is expensive fire testing and certification costs borne by the manufacturers to bring a finished product to market. Failure in a fire test leads to increased expenses in the productdevelopment cycle leading to delayed realization of profits and low cost competitiveness in themarket. Numerical modelling and fire simulations is a less expensive method to predict the outcomesof a real fire test. However, the state of the art models existing in literature suffer from severalshortcomings. A few of them are related to inadequacies related to material property data used inthem as input values. Others include modelling deficiencies pertaining to accurate description ofphysicochemical processes involved in materials during the fire. Often hurdles in implementation ofappropriate numerical methods are also a cause of poor predictability of mathematical models. In this industrial PhD work, a novel one-dimensional computational pyrolysis model was developed using a combination of deterministic and stochastic approach. The tool is capable of prediction of key fire technical properties of interest obtained in a standard cone calorimeter device such as mass loss rate (MLR), heat release rate (HRR), total heat released (THR). The developed model could beincorporated into a bigger CFD code and can be used for estimation of fire growth rate onsuccessively bigger material scale. The performance of novel pyrolysis model considers severalphysicochemical transformation complexities occurring in the material and renders a satisfactoryperformance of the investigated materials on microscale and bench scale level simulations.