Experimental study on the influence of different thermal insulation materials on the fire dynamics in a reduced-scale enclosure

The qualitative behavior with respect to the “flashover” failure criterion, as stated in the ISO 13784-1, was successfully obtained in all of the scaled experiments. As such, the scaled experiments mimicked the behavior of the full scale SW experiments to a satisfactory degree. However, the PIR compartments failed considerably earlier in the full scale tests than in the scaled experiments. Therefore, it can be concluded that when the energy contribution from the core material remained negligible compared to the gas burner, the measured parameters matched quite well. Therefore, if the insulating core material does not dominate the fire dynamics of the compartment and the energy from the gas burner dictates the fire scenario then the scaled set-up will predict the temperature in the full scale compartment. Based on this and with further development with respect to, especially, time, this kind of scaled experiments could be a valuable testing method for assessment of the behavior of sandwich panel, and therefore merit further studies and eventually increased use.