INVESTIGATION OF POLYMERIC MATERIALS USING THE CONE CALORIMETER

The use of polymeric materials in building or construction application s is steadily increasing. Therefore, the potential for these materials to be exposed to fire is also increased. The understanding of the pyr olysis characteristics of these materials is thus a necessity. There a re many standard tests used to evaluate materials. Unfortunately, the correlation between these tests and large scale fire is less than desi rable. A new bench scale rate of heat release apparatus, the Cone Calo rimeter, is now being used more frequently in pyrolysis testing of pol ymeric materials. This apparatus has been shown to correlate much bett er between room scale testing and large scale fire testing. The cone C alorimeter provides a pyrolysis profile of a material under ambient ox ygen conditions. Characteristics such as ignition time, total heat rel ease, maximum rate of heat release, mass loss during pyrolysis, CO2, C O, and smoke production are determined. In this work several almost ne at polymers are examined and the general pyrolysis characteristics of these polymers are discussed. The objective of this work is to provide information of basic polymeric pyrolysis properties of these material s. Variations in the material, i.e., molecular weight, polydispersity, and residual catalysis, along with changes in testing procedures, can have dramatic effects on results. Obviously the addition of flame ret ardant and flame retardant packages to any of these materials will hav e dramatic effects on results.