Quantification of Smoke Production during ICBO Type Room Corner Tests

Abstract

A method was developed to quantify smoke evolution during an ICBO type room corner fire test using temperature and smoke density measurements taken at the room doorway. This method eliminates the need for an overhead canopy hood/ex haust duct system to collect and quantify the smoke emitted from the doorway. The method was established by examining various combinations of room-doorway mea surements as candidate smoke prediction techniques. These included the in-doorway vertical profile of measured temperature or velocity, coupled with averaged smoke density measured across the doorway width or height, or horizontally outward from the doorway top. The basis for assessing the utility of each candidate method was its ability to predict, from doorway measurements, the smoke production measured by a hood/exhaust duct system. The data used in this evaluation were from four ICBO type room corner fire tests conducted by Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. (ULI) for SPI under a previous contract. The recommended prediction technique estimates volumetric outflow of combus tion products from the doorway from the vertical temperature profile in the door way. The temperature profile is truncated to include only data above the inflow- outflow interface. The "best" estimate of smoke density (concentration) in the outflow was obtained from instrumentation oriented horizontally outward from the top of the doorway. The authors presented a paper, "Quantification of Smoke Production During ICBO Type Room Corner Tests—An SPI Report," to the 30th Annual Technical/ Marketing Conference in October 1986. Although the described research was near ing completion at the time of that presentation, significant factors, particularly on matters related to data truncation, became evident only shortly before the presenta tion, and long after submitting the paper for pre-print in the conference proceedings. The purpose of this presentation is to briefly summarize previously reported materi als, address new research findings, present conclusions, and make recommendations both for implementation of the analysis technique and for data collection in future ICBO type room fire testing.