An Approach for Flux and Thickness Scaling of Cone Calorimeter Data for Predicting the Pyrolysis of Materials

This paper presents an engineering approach to modeling pyrolysis. Instead of attempting to define detailed solid phase reactions, this method dynamically scales data from cone calorimeter tests of a material performed for different cone fluxes and/or sample thicknesses. The method can utilize data from multiple cone exposures and/or multiple sample thicknesses. The method compares the model predicted heat flux to a burning surface to the reference heat flux for a cone calorimeter test. The reference heat flux is the flame heat flux plus that portion of the cone heat flux that reaches the sample. In this method the reference heat flux is determined by table lookup of FDS simulations of a range of fuels and fuel burning rates in a cone geometry. The paper provides verification and validation of the approach. Validation is performed at multiple scales including a large series of 1D simulations for 141 materials, a cone calorimeter geometry for PMMA, a single burning item geometry for PMMA, a stack of wood pallets in a corner, and a room corner test at three length scales using plywood or fiber reinforced polymer. The method performs best for polymer and wood based materials. Specifically, it performed best when data from multiple cone exposures was self similar with a monotonic progression in peak burning rate as a function of exposure. The method showed a high degree of grid independence. The method also showed similar or improved performance to simulations using the detailed solid phase kinetics.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10694-025-01767-1.