Benchmarking the Single Item Ignition Prediction Capability of B-RISK Using Furniture Calorimeter and Room-Size Experiments

This paper benchmarks B-RISK’s capability to predict item ignition in multiple object compartment fire simulations. A series of fire experiments have been conducted which measured single item ignition times under the furniture calorimeter and in the ISO 9705 room. These experiments used mock-up armchair, TV and cabinetry furniture items created from three common materials found in most households in New Zealand exposed to a 100 kW gas burner flame. B-RISK uses the flux-time product (FTP) method as the criterion to predict ignition of items, based on radiation received using the point source model (PSM). This paper presents an analysis of the B-RISK predictions compared to the experimental measurements. Due to the mathematical formulation of the PSM and FTP method, it is found that the predicted ignition time is sensitive to the distance between the radiative source and the item. Predicted ignition times of armchairs constructed of polyurethane foam were within 14% of the ISO 9705 room experimental results. However, for the furniture calorimeter experiments it is found that to get reasonable predictions of the ignition times for the mock-up armchair and TV items there is a need to account for the burner flame movement by adjusting the radial distance by 10–30 mm. Direct flame contact was required to ignite the mock-up cabinetry items and B-RISK was unable to successfully predict this ignition time.