| Abstract: | The use of polymeric materials in building or construction applications is steadily increasing. Therefore, the potential for these materials to be exposed to fire is also increased. The understanding of the pyrolysis characteristics of these materials is thus a necessity. There are many standard tests used to evaluate materials. Unfortunately, the correlation between these tests and large scale fire is less than desirable. A new bench scale rate of heat release apparatus, the Cone Calorimeter, is now being used more frequently in pyrolysis testing of polymeric materials. This apparatus has been shown to correlate much better between room scale testing and large scale fire testing. The cone Calorimeter provides a pyrolysis profile of a material under ambient oxygen conditions. Characteristics such as ignition time, total heat release, maximum rate of heat release, mass loss during pyrolysis, CO2, CO, and smoke production are determined. In this work several almost neat polymers are examined and the general pyrolysis characteristics of these polymers are discussed. The objective of this work is to provide information of basic polymeric pyrolysis properties of these materials. Variations in the material, i.e., molecular weight, polydispersity, and residual catalysis, along with changes in testing procedures, can have dramatic effects on results. Obviously the addition of flame retardant and flame retardant packages to any of these materials will have dramatic effects on results. |
