Fire Behavior of Upholstered Furniture and Mattresses

In the United States alone, deaths due to furniture and bed fires still rank as the top-most category of fire losses. The flammability of upholstered furniture is a major concern of engineers and others across a wide swath of organizations. This book was written to provide its audience with the science and engineering need to better understand the combustibility of the products they manufacture, purchase, and try to extinguish.

Beginning with a brief overview of materials, safety design and standards, the text covers topics such as flame ignition, spread, toxic gases, heat release rate (HRR), test methods, fire hazard analysis, and selected regulations in the US, UK, and EU.

This book was written to address the science and engineering information needs of public and private sector fire technology personnel including fire service students and officers, fire investigators, fire protection engineers, government officials, textile, chemical, and furniture industry personnel, or institutional furniture purchasers.

Introduction
General
Arrangement of the Book
Upholstered Furniture Structure and Mattresses
Upholstered Furniture and Mattresses
Design and Fire Safety
Upholstered Item Fire Statistics
Summary of Regulatory Development
Fundamentals
Pyrolysis and Combustion
Smoldering
Transition to Flaming
Flaming Ignition
Flame Spread
Heat Release
Propagating and Non-Propagating Fires
Inter-Item Spread
Interaction with Enclosure
Flashover
Smoke and Toxic Gases
Test Methods, Standards and Regulations
Cigarette Ignition
Flaming Fire Tests, Standards and Regulations
Smoke and Toxic Gases
Ignition Sources
Matches, Small Gas Flames and Methenamine Pills
Wood Cribs
Newspaper Sheets and Their Gas Burner Replacements
Waste Paper Baskets: Real and Simulated
Radiant Flux Ignition Sources
Other Ignition Sources and Locations
Large Open-Flame or Radiation Sources
Effects of Test Apparatus and of Test Scale
Comparison of Bench-Scale Results
Comparison of Bench and Full-Scale Results
Upholstered Item Design Engineering
Ignition Resistance to Cigarettes
Flaming Fires
Smoke
Toxic Products
Modeling
Introduction
Furniture Fire Models
A Component HRR Model for Furniture Composites
Fire Hazard Analysis
Smoldering Fires
Flaming Fires
The Role of HRR
The Role of Other Factors
Relationship of HRR and Available Escape Time
Hazard Predictions Based on Modeling
Conclusion