Estimation of the influence of wood-fire retardants on fire behavior of some types of wood construction materials

In this paper the effect of fire front on the surface of wood samples (pine, aspen and larch) was presented to estimate the effect of different wood-fire retardants. Infrared thermography was used as a diagnostic method. Modern methods of IR-diagnostics and the use of thermal imagers eliminate the need for a large number of thermocouples, which perturb the investigated medium during measurements. At the same time, a much better resolution in space and time can be obtained using infrared diagnostics. The surface temperature distribution was obtained for the test wood samples after exposure to a fire front that was modeled using pine needles. The ignition probability was estimated for the chosen experimental parameters for each kind of wood. In the infrared region the sample surface characteristics were recorded using a thermal imager JADE J530SB with a 2.5–2.7 micron optical filter that allowed a temperature to be measured in the range of 500–850 K. In order to record a temperature in the range of 293–550 K, the recording was conducted without a filter. The fire hazard characteristics of wood after fire retardant treatment showed a significant reduction in the surface temperature and the resistance to fire for the chosen parameters of the experiment compared to the same untreated sample