Laboratory Experiments and their Applicability

Chapter 6 in the book: The Dalmarnock Fire Tests: Experiments and Modelling, Edited by G. Rein, C. Abecassis Empis and R. Carvel, Published by the School of Engineering and Electronics, University of Edinburgh, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9557497-0-4In conjunction with the Dalmarnock Fire Tests a series of laboratory tests have been conducted at the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering at the University of Edinburgh (UoE) in support of the large scale tests. These were conducted prior to and post the tests in Dalmarnock. Before the tests, ignition experiments were carried out in the laboratory to ensure flame spread from the wastepaper basket to the sofa. The later series of lab tests comprised of small scale cone calorimeter tests, burning bench scale samples, and large scale calorimeter tests, burning full-scale furniture items, to serve as input for fire models, which require input in respect to intrinsic material properties and their characteristics of combustion. These tests were conducted after the actual experiments, due to the blind CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) prediction of Test One as part of a Round-Robin study. In addition, an exemplary description is presented outlining the possibilities of how the data obtained can be appropriately implemented for use as fire model input