Optical measurement of smoke from plastic building materials

This paper reports the optical measurement of smoke from burning sheets of building materials used widely in the building industry, including plywood, cardboard, acrylic, phenol-formaldehyde, polyethylene, polycarbonate and nylon. A modified NBS chamber was constructed to measure smoke by a white light source and an HeNe laser. The 'forward-scattering' effect between the light and the smoke particles were investigated revealing that acrylic, polycarbonate and nylon will give the forward scattering effect, indicating that smoke concentration from such materials should not be measured by white light sources.Department of Building Services Engineerin