Flame spread of flexible polyurethane foam: comprehensive study

Polyurethane foams are widely used in many industrial applications: automotive, upholstered furniture and mattresses, insulating panels for building, etc. By its chemical nature, polyurethane is very flammable and the flammability of polyurethane foams is an important industry issue. Depending on the final application, many test methods are in place to characterise foam combustion and legislation exists to ensure that foams comply with specific standards. This paper deals with the fire properties of flexible polyurethane foams. It provides basic correlations between some existing fire test methods and the data recorded under cone calorimeter conditions. The long term target of such an investigation is to predict the burning behavior of foams under specific test conditions from the data of the cone calorimeter.