Distribution curves for common interior finishing materials

MEFE Candidate: Yih-Pying Hou

Co-Supervisors: Associate Professor Charles Fleischmann, Dr. Michael Spearpoint

Research Aims

This research is to establish species yield as guidance for practicing fire engineers, design reviewers, and researchers for the following species:

  1. Soot,
  2. Carbon monoxide,
  3. Carbon dioxide, and
  4. Hydrogen cyanide, and in addition, the heat of combustion will also be analysed.

These parameters were chosen because they are the primary products that affect tenability of designs. It is expected that little data are available on hydrogen cyanide, but it is still included for completeness and to build a platform for further research.

In addition, since species yields are highly influenced by their ventilation conditions, free burn conditions will be the primary focus of this research. However, depending on data availability, ventilation limited conditions may also be examined.

All species yield time series data and heat of combustion time series data will be normalized by its mass loss rate in UCFIRE for unit consistency. Uncertainties involved in data measurements such as calibration, reading, resolution, systematic, and random uncertainties will be reduced as much as possible. Statistical analysis software such as SPSS and BestFit will be used to describe the distribution characteristics of the individual data, as well as grouped data sets.

Depending on the amount of experimental data available, the statistical approach to describe the spread of data may be modified from histogram or cumulative distribution curve, to a simpler variability expression, for example, deviation from the mean. These parameters will then be gathered to produce a distribution function for each species yield, under different interior finishing categories.

The aim of this research is to examine the species yield for common interior finishing items. This work will also identify areas that require more experimental data to bridge the data gap, as well as providing a collection of relevant literature and references.