Experimental study on fire hazard of typical curtain materials in ISO 9705 fire test room

Curtain materials are commonly used as decoration, shade, or screen. They are flammable and are usually across a large part of a room, leading to the risk of a high fire hazard. Once ignited, the upward fire spread would accelerate the fire development in an enclosure. In this paper, fire hazard of three typical curtain materials with different pleat rates were tested in an ISO 9705 fire test room. Fire parameters such as temperature field, flame spread rate, heat release rate (HRR), and emitted gases, and the influences of pleat rate and cotton content on flame spread rate were investigated. The correlation between flame spread rate and HRR was discussed. The results show that the upward flame spread has an accelerating rate, and an inverted‐triangle burning area would emerge during the combustion. Some horizontal fibrillar structures appear in this burning area. Pleat rate and cotton content have considerable influence on the curtain fire behavior. The flame spread rate shows a linear response to HRR at the early stage. In addition, a function between average flame spread rate and pleat rate for engineering estimation is proposed, and a linear relationship between HRR/m_CO and m/m_CO has been obtained. The study results provide valuable reference to building fire simulation and safety design. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.