Analyzing ignition data for fire modeling purposes

Abstract

SummaryFire models, or other fire safety engineering tools, may require that input data be supplied for characterizing the ignition of combustible solids. This may be done in ad hoc manner and result in poor realism for modeling the ignition process. Extensive research on the ignition of solid materials has been done in recent decades, notably in characterizing the ignition time as a function of incident heat flux. This paper summarizes the highlights of what has been learned during such research. It then offers the user algorithms that may prove useful in the development or advancement of fire models. The suggested methods can also be valuable to performing simple (i.e., spreadsheet‐based) analysis of ignition data in order to extract effective thermophysicochemical properties of tested materials. Procedures for both thermally thick and thermally thin solids are presented. The previously developed procedures for a constant heating flux are extended to a time‐varying heat flux, with the latter based on the Duhamel superposition principle.