Upholstered Furniture Transition from Smoldering to Flaming

This paper reviews the available literature on experimental measurements of smoldering to flaming transition in upholstered furniture. It is found that of 102 items, 64% made the transition to flaming. For the items which transitioned to flaming, the time for the transition to occur ranged from 22 to 306 min. Some of the factors affecting the likely time to transition are known qualitatively, but a quantitative method of prediction is not available which would allow one to predict such transition occurrence (and time) on the basis of construction details and fire environment.