Abstract
Nowadays, thermoplastic materials, which represent a risk of the high melt flow fire spread, are widely used in construction industry. The flow of thermoplastic’s melt drips will accelerate the downward flame spread and fall into the pool fires which appears at the foot of the wall fires. Fire will develop to larger and larger soon because of the wall fires and pool fires mutual enhancement mechanism. In this paper, a new experimental setup is used to quantitatively analyze the burning characteristics of pool fires at different steady mass feeding rates. PP (polypropylene), PE (polyethylene) and PS (polystyrene) thermoplastic polymers are selected as test materials and were heated to be the molten phase by electric heater. N2 gas is continuously injected into the chamber to avoid a sudden ignition. The characteristics parameters including dripping rate, flowing rate of hot molten liquids, burning rate and radiant flux of flowing pool fires are analyzed. The experiment results preliminarily suggest that the hot molten liquids induced by PP polymers are easier to drop and flow than that by PE and PS. Therefore, PP materials may be more dangerous for their faster pool fires flowing rate on the floor. Meanwhile, the burning rate of pool fires induced by PS is higher than that by PE and PP, although the dripping rate and flowing rate of PS is the slowest for its large viscosity. For larger mass feeding rates, the dripping rate of three hot molten drips becomes faster. It also indicates that the experimental process of surface tension flow and the flame front of pool fires do not coincide with melt flow front for PP and PE at different mass feeding rates. Specifically, the flame front of pool fires induced by molten PP or PE polymers is slower than the forward movement of the hot molten liquids. The reason for these combustion characteristics of molten thermoplastic polymers that mentioned above may be related to viscosity and structures of thermoplastics, as well as the pyrolysis process of different thermoplastics.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
John TL. Thermoplastic polymer additives: theory and practice. New York: Marcel Dekker Inc; 1989.
Ogorkiewicz RM. Thermoplastics properties and design. London: Wiley; 1974.
Zhang J, Shields TJ, Silcock GWH. Effect of melting behavior on upward flame spread of thermoplastics. Fire Mater. 1997;21:1–6.
Xie Q. Experimental study on melting and flowing behavior of thermoplastics combustion based on a new setup with a T-shape trough. J Hazard Mater. 2009;166:1321–5.
Sherratt JO. The effect of thermoplastic melt flow behavior on the dynamics of fire growth. PhD thesis. University of Edinburg; UK; 2001.
Sherratt JO, Drysdale D. The effect of melt flow process on the fire behavior of thermoplastics. In Proceedings of the 9th international fire science and engineering conference (Interflame 2001). Greenwich; 2001: 149–50.
Ohlemiller TJ, Shields J, Butler K. Exploring the role of polymer melt viscosity in melt flow and flammability behavior, new developments and key market trends in flame retardancy. In Proceedings of the fall conference. Lancaster; 2000, p. 1–28.
Ohlemiller TJ, Butler K. Influence of polymer melt behavior on flammability. Fifteenth meeting of the UJ-NR Panel on Fire Research and Safety. San Antonio; 2000: 81–88.
Wang N, Tu R, Xie Q, et al. Melting behavior of typical thermoplastic materials-an experimental and chemical kinetics study. J Hazard Mater. 2013;262:9–15.
An W, Jiang L, Sun J, et al. Correlation analysis of sample thickness, heat flux, and cone calorimetry test data of polystyrene foam. J Therm Anal Calorim. 2015;119:229–38.
An W, Xiao H, Liew KM, et al. Downward flame spread over extruded polystyrene. J Therm Anal Calorim. 2015;119:1091–103.
Xie Q, Tu R, Wang N, Ma X, Jiang X. Experimental study on flowing burning behaviors of a pool fire with dripping of melted thermoplastics. J Hazard Mater. 2014;267:48–54.
Degroote E, Garcia-Ybarra PL. Flame spreading over liquid ethanol. Eur Phys J E B. 2000;13:381–6.
Degroote E, Garcia-Ybarra PL. Flame propagation over liquid ethanol. Experimental results. J Therm Anal Calorim. 2005;80:541–8.
Degroote E, Garcia-Ybarra PL. Flame propagation over liquid ethanol (II): steady propagation regimes. J Therm Anal Calorim. 2005;80:549–53.
Torrance KE, Mahajan RL. Surface tension flows induced by a moving thermal source. Combust Sci Technol. 1975;10:125–36.
James G. Quintiere, fundamentals of fire phenomenon. London: Wiley; 2006.
Fay JA. Spread of large LNG pool on the sea. J Hazard Mater. 2007;140:541–51.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51476157, 51120165001), National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program: No. 2012CB719701) and Huaqiao University Scientific Research Foundation (No. 14BS305). The authors thankfully acknowledge all these supports.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ma, X., Tu, R., Xie, Q. et al. Experimental study on the burning behaviors of three typical thermoplastic materials liquid pool fire with different mass feeding rates. J Therm Anal Calorim 123, 329–337 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-015-4898-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-015-4898-0