Fire Growth in Standard Tests and Railcars

Abstract

Large scale flammability performance of interior finish used on railcars has been evaluated in previous studies using the NFPA 286 room corner fire test, which has a cross-section similar to a railcar. In some studies, the wall containing the door was removed to account for the shorter length of the room compared to the railcar length. The focus of this study is to assess whether the NFPA 286 standard room-corner test with a door represents conditions that developed inside a railcar during a fire. Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) was used to model the fire growth in a NFPA 286 standard room-corner test with a door, NFPA 286 room without the wall containing the door, and railcar geometry with a single door open. All three cases had the same exposure fire in a corner and the same lining material. In predictions of the NFPA 286 room-corner test with a door, gas temperature, heat release rate, and time to flashover agreed well with available NFPA 286 standard test data. The simulation results of fire growth inside a railcar with one side door open produced similar conditions and fire growth compared with the standard NFPA 286 room with a door. For simulations on the NFPA 286 room with the wall containing the door removed, it was found that removal of the wall with the door resulted in non-conservative fire growth conditions with the gas temperature and heat release rate under-estimated compared to the standard NFPA 286 room with a door. These simulations indicate that the standard NFPA 286 room-corner test with a door is representative of conditions that would develop inside of a railcar.