External heating of electrical cables and auto-ignition investigation

Electric cables are now extensively used for both residential and industrial applications. During more than twenty years, multi-scale approaches have been developed to study fire behavior of such cables that represents a serious challenge. Cables are rather complicated materials because they consist of an insulated part and jacket of polymeric materials. These polymeric materials can have various chemical structures, thicknesses and additives and generally have a char-forming tendency when exposed to heat source. In this work, two test methods are used for the characterization of cable pyrolysis and flammability. The first one permits the investigation of cable pyrolysis. A description of the cable mass loss is obtained, coupling an Arrhenius expression with a 1D thermal model of cables heating. Numerical results are successfully compared with experimental data obtained for two types of cable commonly used in French nuclear power plants. The second one is devoted to ignition investigations (spontaneous or piloted) of these cables. All these basic observations, measurements and modelling efforts are of major interest for a more comprehensive fire resistance evaluation of electric cables.