Resources for material properties

[K. Overholt]

I find that students and new users that are learning FDS have no idea
where to turn for a good source on material properties such as heat of
combustion, conductivity, emissivity, specific heat, etc. Especially
since the data may be spread out between multiple types of books and
subjects which focus on different areas.

I think that those modelers who know which books and resources to find
all of the input parameters for materials and surfaces in FDS could
share your knowledge and resources and benefit many others with this
discussion.

In this discussion, you could list a few books, websites, or other
resources that you use to lookup any chemical or phase related
properties for parameters to input into FDS. This is important because
a new user may be more prone to just settle with the numbers found in
the manual, which are for example usage only.

Please help the fire modeling community and NIST gather and share
these resources, and as the discussion develops, the best references
in the discussion will be pulled into a new webpage.

I'll start with a few that I use:

SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering
Fundamentals of Fire Phenomena, Quintiere
Ignition Handbook, Babrauskas
NIST Chemistry Webbook: http://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/
ChemFinder: http://chemfinder.cambridgesoft.com/

[Bryan Klein]

Parital INSC Material Properties Database: http://www.insc.anl.gov/matprop/thermo.php

[PeteM]

A few more I've found to have interesting data:

Cone calorimeter data from Worcester Polytechnic Institute -
http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/Fire/Lab/Cone/Data
Cone calorimeter evaluation of wood producs - Fifteenth Annual BCC
Conference Flame Retardency 2004 - session 5
Fire performance of hardwood species - Robert N. White USDA, FS,
Forest Products Laboratory
Fire Safety of Passenegr Trains - Phase 1 material evaluation - NISTIR
6132, NIST
Flammability of alternative daily cover materials - Paul A. Kittle,
Ph.D. - Rusmer inc.
Flammability of upholstered furniture using the cone calorimeter -
Andrew R Coles - University of Canterbury
Theory and testing for the fire behaviour of materials for the
transportation industry - FM GLobal

[PeteM]

OK,

As a atarter for ten I've uploaded a file called materials.txt which
may help as a base for building your own set of materials data.

Enjoy

On May 4, 10:38 am, PeteM <petem...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> A few more I've found to have interesting data:
>

> Cone calorimeter data from Worcester Polytechnic Institute -http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/Fire/Lab/Cone/Data

> Cone calorimeter evaluation of wood producs - Fifteenth Annual BCC
> Conference Flame Retardency 2004 - session 5
> Fire performance of hardwood species - Robert N. White USDA, FS,
> Forest Products Laboratory
> Fire Safety of Passenegr Trains - Phase 1 material evaluation - NISTIR
> 6132, NIST
> Flammability of alternative daily cover materials - Paul A. Kittle,
> Ph.D. - Rusmer inc.
> Flammability of upholstered furniture using the cone calorimeter -
> Andrew R Coles - University of Canterbury
> Theory and testing for the fire behaviour of materials for the
> transportation industry - FM GLobal
>
> On May 3, 7:20 pm, Bryan Klein <bryanwkl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>

> > Parital INSC Material Properties Database:http://www.insc.anl.gov/matprop/thermo.php- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[szilagyics]

Hi All!

I find two interesting site : http://matweb.com and http://engineeringtoolbox.com

You can find many properties of different materials.

Csaba

[clauten]

PeteM-

Good list of MATLs in the text file you uploaded.

But just to clarify for the group--there are a few MATLs in there for
which heat of reaction and heat of combustion are specified, but these
materials would be treated as noncombustible by FDS. If you want these
materials to pyrolyze (burn) then you also have to specify the yields
of fuel and residue, as well as the decomposition kinetics (pre-
exponential factor and activaiton energy).

Also, be careful with the "heat_of_reaction". This is not the same as
the "heat of gasification" that is usually tabulated in textbooks and
handbooks. I didn't check, but I would guess that the Quintiere book
lists the heat of gasification which isn't what FDS needs for the
heat_of_reaction.

Chris

> > > Parital INSC Material Properties Database:http://www.insc.anl.gov/matprop/thermo.php-Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

[Kevin]

This is a very good discussion and exactly what this Forum is all
about.

As you can see, materials properties are a big issue. By discarding
the "database" in FDS 5, we hoped to spur discussion about properties,
and not just have people grab properties from a database. Chris L is
absolutely right about interpreting these properties. Things like k,
rho, and c, are fairly well understood by modelers and non-modelers
alike, but fire-specific properties like "heat of gasification", "heat
of pyrolysis", "ignition temperature", and so on, are a different
matter altogether. Some of these terms are defined by the particular
bench-scale apparatus used to obtain them; some are defined by the
mathematical model in which they are used. Ultimately, we want to use
in FDS thermal/pyro parameters that have clear meanings from both an
experimental and numerical point of view. Simo Hostikka of VTT
Finland implemented most of the solid phase models that have been used
in FDS, past and present. His goal was to allow more flexibility in
describing the geometry and reaction paths of the solid. Which is why
he moved away from parameters like "HEAT_OF_VAPORIZATION" because it
implies that there is only one reaction occurring in the solid, and
all the reaction does is convert solid to fuel gas. A big stumbling
block for us in obtaining material properties is that most solid phase
reactions cannot be described simply as a single solid-to-fuel gas
process.

FDS 5 provides the framework for a better treatment of the solid
phase, but things are still evolving. We seek a balance between
complexity of physics and practicality. Obviously, there are dozens
of reactions occurring inside of a burning material, much like there
are many reactions occurring when the fuel gases combust. We can't
account for them all explicitly in FDS and still expect to get
anything done. So we seek for any type of material the key reaction
paths. A thermoplastic may be adequately described by a single solid-
to-fuel gas reaction. A charring material may require several solid-
to-solid reactions, like char and ash formation. How we're going to
get these properties easily is still an open question, and that's why
we're trying to expand the conversation beyond just the modelers.

In the meantime, we're going to start a user-controlled list of
refererences like the ones posted to this thread so that we all have
resources to turn to now. Eventually, we want this to evolve into a
real "database", but one in which the properties have been derived via
some established process, using standard bench-scale methods, and
clearly referenced. To get there, we have to work as a community to
establish the procedure. There's certainly more to come on this.

K