The role of cone calorimeter in the investigation of flame retardant materials

The cone calorimeter is a small instrument widely used in the field of fire prevention. It evaluates the fire hazard of materials. HRR and pkHRR are the main parameters to measure the fire hazard of polymeric materials, and TTI is also an important index to evaluate the fire hazard of materials. The TTI/pkHRR ratio can be used to evaluate the potential flashover of the material, i.e. the potential hazard, independent of environmental factors, and the THR is a measure of the internal energy of the material.

When a fire breaks out, the release of smoke and poison is the greatest threat to human life. Through the measurement of SEA and CO, CO2 production, the CONE cone calorimeter can quickly evaluate the smoke and smoke toxicity of a given flame retardant material.

In addition, use the measured parameters such as EHC, HRR, SEA, CO and CO2, and the amount of generation to measure the flame retardancy in the gas phase and the flame retardancy.slowdown in the condensed phase of the material during the cracking process. If the HRR decreases, it indicates that the flame retardancy has improved; if the EHC is greatly reduced and the SEA is significantly increased, the gas phase combustion is not safe, indicating that the flame retardant works in the gas phase, which belongs to the gas phase flame retardant mechanism, and there is no major change in EHC, HRR and MLR decrease, it belongs to the condensed phase flame retardancy.

Traditional testing methods include horizontal and vertical combustion methods, oxygen index method, etc. These testing methods have made great contributions to the development of flame retardant science. Under this requirement, a new generation of flame retardant material testing instruments was developed - a cone calorimeter. Although it is a small test instrument, it can simulate the combustion behavior of large-scale materials very well, and the evaluation of the flame retardant effect of materials isal more realistic. At the same time, it is also a great help in the analysis and research of the flame retardant mechanism of materials.

The cone calorimeter is a new type of combustion testing device developed in the early 1980s. It can simulate various parameters of real combustion. It is mainly used to measure the rate of heat release when a material is burned. Studies have shown that the heat release rate of materials when they burn, i.e. the heat released when materials burn per unit time, is the most important fire parameter characterizing the fire hazard of materials in a fire. Therefore, in recent years, various instruments and methods for measuring the heat release of materials have appeared on the market. The cone calorimeter uses the principle of oxygen consumption to measure the heat release rate of materials during combustion. This method hast replace the traditional energy balance based heat output test method and is widely used in various heat output test instruments and methods. In addition, it can measure the heat output per unit area when the material is burned, sample ignition time, mass loss, smoke density, effective heat of combustion, harmful gas content and other parameters. These parameters are very important for assessing the performance of a flame retardant or flame retardant system, because in an actual fire, the victim is burned not only by the heat of the flame, but also by materials such as polymers. Hazards such as suffocation due to decomposition and formation of large amounts of smoke.
For more information about cone calorimeter, please search directly in Standard Group, visit * or directly.

Prev: Specimen setup for Taber Linear Abraser