During a wildfire, combustible exterior building materials, like decking assemblies, may be ignited and cause severe damage or total loss of a dwelling [
1]. Therefore, in high fire risk areas, such as Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI), the flammability studies of exterior materials are a major issue in order to reduce construction vulnerabilities. Given these findings, we propose a study at material and product scales of the flammability of two kinds of decking slabs, made of wood and thermoplastic material by focusing on radiant exposure.
At material scale, the two slabs were cut in order to obtain an exposed surface of 36 cm2. The samples were placed under a calorimeter cone and were exposed to heat fluxes ranging from 8 to 50 kW/m2. Ignitability, combustibility and fire performance were analysed with the critical heat flux, ignition time, ignition temperature, different phases of combustion, heat release rate (HRR) and smoke production. The results demonstrated a greater ignitability of wooden slabs compared to thermoplastic ones. However, the latter are more combustible and emit more smoke.
At product scale, the whole slabs were used (40 × 40 cm2). A 500 × 500 mm2 radiant panel modelled an impacting flame front. For the wooden slabs, two configurations were studied: the first with the slat of the slabs oriented parallel to the radiant panel and the second one for which the slat were oriented perpendicularly. The same criteria as previously were analysed, as well as the rate of spread and the flame height of the resulting fire. A greater ignitibility and combustibility were obtained for the perpendicular configuration, due to a greater exposed surface. At this material scale, we observed that the combustibility of the thermoplastic slabs was greater than that of the wooden slabs.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S.; methodology, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S.; software, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S.; validation, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S.; formal analysis, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S.; investigation, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S.; resources, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S.; data curation, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S.; writing—original draft preparation, K.M.-P.; writing—review and editing, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S.; visualization, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S.; supervision, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S.; project administration, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S.; funding acquisition, K.M.-P., V.T.-F. and P.-A.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research was supported by the projects “MED-STAR” (Strategie e misure per la mitigazione del rischio di incendio nell’area Mediterranea) and “INTERMED” (Interventions pour gérer et réduire le risque d’incendie à l’interface habitat-espace naturel) financed by the fund PC IFM 2014-2020 (
http://interreg-maritime.eu/fr/web/med-star).
Institutional Review Board Statement
Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement
Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement
Not applicable.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Reference
- Maranghides, A.; McNamara, D.; Vihnanek, R.; Restaino, J.; Leland, C. A Case Study of a Community Affected by the Waldo Fire—Event Timeline and Defensive Actions; Technical Note (NIST TN); National Institute of Standards and Technology: Gaithersburg, MA, USA, 2015. [Google Scholar]
| Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. |
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).