On Assessing Flammability of Textiles

Abstract

This study is to investigate the fire safety of textile and clothing materials. It also assesses the flammability for textiles in general. With the increase in big fires, accidental or non-accidental, people are worrying about the fire behaviour of combustibles. The flammability of textile and clothing materials is a great concern. Appropriate tests should be developed to assess textile and clothing materials to ensure they are safe in a fire. In fact, textile products should satisfy some fire safety criteria depending on their uses. There are specified flammability requirements on selected products, though whether these are good enough for assessing modern textile materials should be watched. Typical textile materials with and without fire retardants protection were selected for assessing the fire behaviour with a cone calorimeter. High radiative heat flux up to 70 kWm‒2 was applied to assess those selected textile materials. A cone calorimeter is suggested to be the minimum requirement, though some full-scale burning tests are necessary for some purposes. Heat release rate and flame spreading measures are proposed in ranking the fire safety of textile materials.