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An attachment for use with the NBS smoke density chamber for measurement of smoke obscuration at different orientations
Author(s) -
Hirschler Marcelo M.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
fire and materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.482
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-1018
pISSN - 0308-0501
DOI - 10.1002/fam.810170405
Subject(s) - smoke , cone calorimeter , combustor , orientation (vector space) , calorimeter (particle physics) , gas burner , environmental science , materials science , optics , detector , engineering , combustion , physics , waste management , geometry , chemistry , mathematics , char , organic chemistry , pyrolysis
Abstract The NBS smoke density chamber (ASTM E662) is the most popular test instrument used to measure smoke obscuration. In its standard use, it can accommodate only samples in the vertical orientation. In this work, the smoke generated by 12 materials was measured in the smoke chamber in the normal way and by using a proposed attachment, with a dual‐burner system which can be oriented both horizontally and vertically. Results obtained were different for many of the materials, due particularly to melting characteristics of some of them, which then led to inaccurately small smoke values. Most of the materials were also tested in the cone calorimeter, which gave the same trends (albeit with a mediocre correlation) as the smoke chamber in the horizontal orientation. The correlation between cone calorimeter results and vertical orientation (traditional or dual‐burner) results in the smoke chamber was virtually non‐existent. This suggests that the use of the NBS smoke chamber in a horizontal orientation may result in it yielding more meaningful data.