Understanding materials flammability

Publisher Summary Flammability is the ease with which a material is ignited, the intensity with which it burns and releases heat once ignited, its propensity to spread fire, and the rate at which it generates smoke and toxic combustion products during gasification and burning. A comprehensive evaluation of a material's overall flammability may require data from several laboratory tests, perhaps combined with some form of analysis or modeling to interpret the results properly. Several of the fire properties like ignitability can be determined from bench-scale flammability tests. It is useful for establishing relative rankings or for developing input data for predictions of large-scale fire behavior. The cost of small-scale fire testing is considerably less than that of large-scale fire tests because relatively small quantities of sample material are required, and the setup and breakdown time is much shorter. These factors make bench-scale flammability testing a cost-effective screening tool and can reduce a new material's time-to-market. Due to potential time and cost savings, combined with an increased recognition of the importance of material fire properties, there is considerable interest in using data obtained from small-scale flammability tests in conjunction with correlations or models to predict large-scale fire behavior.