ASTM International

Standard Guide for Room Fire Experiments
 N E603

Annotation

This guide addresses means of conducting full-scale fire experiments that evaluate the fire-test-response characteristics of materials, products, or assemblies under actual fire conditions.

It is intended as a guide for the design of the experiment and for the use and interpretation of its results. The guide is also useful for establishing laboratory conditions that simulate a given set of fire conditions to the greatest extent possible.

This guide allows users to obtain fire-test-response characteristics of materials, products, or assemblies, which are useful data for describing or appraising their fire performance under actual fire conditions.

The results of experiments conducted in accordance with this guide are also useful elements for making regulatory decisions regarding fire safety requirements. The use for regulatory purposes of data obtained from experiments conducted using this guide requires that certain conditions and criteria be specified by the regulating authority.

The rationale for conducting room fire experiments in accordance with this guide is shown in 1.5-1.8

Room fire experiments are a means of generating input data for computer fire models and for providing output data with which to compare modeling results.

One of the major reasons for conducting room fire experiments is as an experimental means of assessing the potential fire hazard associated with the use of a material or product in a particular application. This should be borne in mind when designing nonstandard experiments.

A rationale for conducting room fire experiments is the case when smaller-scale fire tests inadequately represent enduse applications.