Experimental study of upward flame spread over canvas hung in the air

Abstract

Canvas, a potential fire hazard in the buildings, may cause fire by overheating or short-circuit of household appliances. Once ignited, the flame of canvas would quickly spread upward and accelerate the fire development. In this article, upward flame spread over four typical canvas materials was tested in one large space enclosure. Fire thermal parameters such as mass loss rate, surface temperature, and flame spread rate were recorded and analyzed for all upward flame spread experiments. The results show that there is a linear relationship between raw canvases mass and time while a power function relationship between oil canvases mass and time. Surface temperature peak values in the range 400-900°C mainly depend on material characteristics rather than material size. Meanwhile we find that flame spread rate could be expressed as one power function of time. This means if canvas vertical fire is not controlled at fire ignition stage, canvas fire would spread increasingly fast which would cause a big fire hazard.