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Comprehensive assessment of the thermal aging effects on fire risks of PVC cable

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Abstract

There is still a disagreement on how aging affects the risk of cable fire. In order to comprehensively assess the aging effects on cable fire risks, a series of cone calorimeter tests and flame spread experiments on accelerated thermal aging PVC cables were carried out with various thermal aging time. A large amount of fire characteristics was measured, including the ignition time (TTI), heat release rate, critical heat flux, fire performance index (FPI) and fire growth index (FGI) by cone calorimeter tests, as well as flame spread and dripping behaviors by flame spread experiments. Results showed that the values of TTI, FPI and the dripping frequency are increased with thermal aging time, but the maximum heat release rate, flame spread rate, FGI are decreased. It is evidenced that the thermal aging PVC cables have lower ignition risk, heat release risk, fire growth risk, but have a higher risk of dripping and igniting surrounding combustibles. This work may provide an in-depth understanding of fire risk of thermal aging cables.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52074202, 52104211) and the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province, China (Nos. 2022-KF-23-07).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Safety Science and Emergency Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Kaixuan Tang, Shuai Wang & Ying Zhang

  2. Hefei Institute of Public Safety, Tsinghua University, Hefei, 230601, China

    Ming Fu

  3. State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Safety Technology, China Coal Technology Engineering Group Shenyang Research Institute, Shenyang, China

    Fuchao Tian

  4. China Waterborne Transport Research Institute, Beijing, 100088, China

    Xiangfeng Chen

Authors
  1. Kaixuan Tang
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  2. Shuai Wang
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  3. Ming Fu
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  4. Fuchao Tian
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  5. Xiangfeng Chen
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  6. Ying Zhang
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [KT], [YZ] and [SW]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [KT], and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ying Zhang.

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Tang, K., Wang, S., Fu, M. et al. Comprehensive assessment of the thermal aging effects on fire risks of PVC cable. J Therm Anal Calorim (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-024-12959-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-024-12959-2

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