Test Flammability of PVC Wall Panel with Cone Calorimetry

Fire behaviour of PVC wall panel was evaluated by bench scale test with Cone calorimeter. Samples were tested with three incident irradiance heat fluxes to get the minimum heat flux required for ignition of the samples from fitting line. This minimum ignition incident heat flux demonstrates the material is of low fire risk under 20 kW/m2, and the panel is safe in small accidental fires. Petrella's arbitrary scale parameters were calculated from the test data and the fire behaviour of the PVC wall panel was classified as intermediate risk. Östman/Tsantaridis’ empirical linear regression model and Hansen/Hovde's multiple discriminant function analysis (MDA) were also used in predicting flashover time and classifying the wall panel material from the results of 50 kW/m2 tests. The PVC wall panel was classified as FO-categories 1 material which won’t reach flashover within test duration of 1200 seconds in ISO9705 room. The results illustrate less relationship between arbitrary scale parameters model and FO-category methods.