Fire Performance of Mattresses Across Scales

The fire performance of common furniture such as mattresses is often characterized across a range of scales (bench to full scale). Existing methods suggest that bench-scale results can be used to predict fire behaviour at full-scale. These techniques include the use of Cone Calorimeter data to determine parameters such as the heat release rate per unit area (HRRPU) to be used to predict full scale HRR behaviour. For this study, mattresses produced in two regions (i.e., the UK and the Czech Republic) were procured and their fire performance was characterized at both the bench and full-scale. The presence of fire retardants in the UK product resulted in lower HRR at the bench-scale, and resulted in much more stochastic and variable HRR at the full scale. However, it was also found that at high heat fluxes (e.g., 40 kW/m 2 ) the bench-scale performance between the UK and Czech products were similar while the full-scale behaviour differed significantly. Furthermore in no case did the HRRPUA on the cone scale reflect the full-scale results. Thus, highlighting the complexity of scaling-up fire test data at the bench-scale.