Estimating the fire behavior of wood flooring using a cone calorimeter

This article analyzes the flammability characteristics in order to investigate the adequacy of a newly proposed sampling method for wood and PVC materials that are commonly used for residential flooring. Experiments on commercial products were performed using a cone calorimeter according to ISO 5660-1 specifications. Samples for the test procedure were prepared in two methods: either using a cone calorimeter sample preparation method (case 1), or the proposed sample preparation method, which a simplified form for the actual constructed shape (case 2). The thermal characteristics of the common wood products differed depending on the sampling method, where the peak heat release rate (PHRR) had either two peaks for case 1 or a single peak for case 2, and the total heat rate (THR) and smoke production rate (SPR) also differed according to the case. Especially, the wood flooring differed significantly between the two cases in terms of the number of PHRR peaks and the trend of the SPR curves. Due to these differences, we presented another HRR evaluation method depending on the raw material and the size of HRR to reduce the fire hazards in flooring.