TABLE OF CONTENTS Vytenis Babrauskas
Dr. Vytenis Babrauskas is the president of Fire Science and Technology Inc., a company specializing in fire safety research, fire testing issues, and fire science applications to fire investigations and litigations.
Section 3, Chapter 2 describes the history and development of techniques for measuring heat release rate (HRR). This chapter outlines features and details of today's preferred instrument for measuring bench-scale HRR the cone calorimeter. Other cone calorimeter measuring functions are:
Effective heat of combustion
Mass loss rate
Ignitability
Smoke and soot
Toxic gases
The cone calorimeter is based on the concept of oxygen consumption calorimetry, which is also presented in Section 3, Chapter 2.
This chapter provides both an introduction to and description of cone calorimeter measurement technology. The cone calorimeter has recently assumed a dominant role in bench-scale fire testing of various products; therefore, an emphasis will be placed on the why of various design features. When conducting tests, the cone calorimeter operator needs to consult several other documents. Testing will presumably be in conformance with either ISO 5660 [1] or ASTM E1354. [2] In addition, the "User's Guide for the Cone Calorimeter" [3] should be consulted. This chapter, thus, does not emphasize the operational aspects, which are documented in the above references, but provides the reader with an overall feel for the equipment. Space is not available in the Handbook to fully discuss the applications of cone calorimeter data, apart from the review of data given in Section 3,...
