Development of Test Methods for Assessing the Fire Hazards of Landscaping Mulch

Landscape mulches are widely used adjacent to buildings and represent a potential fire threat to the building. To date, relatively limited research has been conducted to characterize the ignition and flame spread potential of the various types of commercially available landscaping mulches. Consequently, ignition and flame spread test protocols were developed to evaluate candidate mulch products based upon the scientific research involving mulches and forest litters. The ignition protocol used brands from the ASTM E108 test to determine the minimum brand size required for reliable burning of the mulch to the border of the 0.6 m square mulch bed. The flame spread on mulches was assessed for a mulch bed 0.46 m wide by 1.8 m long. The initiating source for the flame spread testing was a gas-fired line burner with an intensity of 108 kW/m. The ability of the mulch bed to propagate flame remote from the initiation source was determined and the resulting flame spread rate was measured. The protocols were exercised in using various types of landscaping mulch (pine bark, hardwood, pine bark nugget, and pine straw mulch). The test protocol is found to be a viable method to provide quantitative measures of the hazards of landscape mulches. Further potential areas of test method development are identified.

[1]  Dani A. Smith.  Measurements of flame length and flame angle in an inclined trench , 1992 .

[2]  B. Mccarthy,et al.  Effects of fine fuel moisture and loading on small scale fire behavior in mixed-oak forests of Southeastern Ohio , 2006 .

[3]  T. J. Shields.  Performance Of Solid Timber External Walls Under Simulated Bushfire Attack , 2003 .

[4]  Mark A. Dietenberger.  Ignition and flame-growth modelling on realistic building and landscape objects in changing environments , 2010 .

[5]  J. Balbi,et al.  Proposal for Theoretical Improvement of Semi-Physical Forest Fire Spread Models Thanks to a Multiphase Approach: Application to a Fire Spread Model Across a Fuel Bed , 2001 .

[6]  Samuel L. Manzello,et al.  Experimental investigation of firebrands: Generation and ignition of fuel beds , 2008 .

[7]  R. C. De Groot,et al.  Resistance of shakes and shingles made from western hemlock and Pacific silver fir to wetting-drying degrade accelerated tests. , 1990 .

[8]  J. C. Jones,et al.  On the Dynamics of Flaming Combustion in Packed Beds of Forest Materials: Part 2. Comparisons with Data from a Bush Fire , 1995 .

[9]  Robert H. White,et al.  Fire Performance of Wood Treated With Combined Fire-Retardant and Preservative Systems , 1997 .

[10]  J. C. Jones,et al.  On the Dynamics of Flaming Combustion in Packed Beds of Forest Materials: Part I , 1995 .

[11]  Samuel L. Manzello,et al.  On the Ignition of Fuel Beds by Firebrands. | NIST , 2005 .

[12]  Paul-Antoine Santoni,et al.  The contribution of radiant heat transfer to laboratory-scale fire spread under the influences of wind and slope , 2001 .

[13]  V. P. Dowling.  IGNITION OF TIMBER BRIDGES IN BUSHFIRES , 1994 .

[14]  D. Evan Mercer,et al.  Fire in the Wildland–Urban Interface , 2012 .

[15]  Carmen Hernando,et al.  Spot fires: Fuel bed flammability and ignition capa bility of firebrands 2 , 2010 .

[16]  Yuji Hasemi,et al.  Experimental Wall Flame Heat Transfer Correlations for the Analysis of Upward Wall Flame Spread , 1984 .

[17]  G. H. Markstein,et al.  Upward fire spread over textiles , 1973 .

[18]  Robert H. White,et al.  Testing and classification of individual plants for fire behaviour: plant selection for the wildland-urban interface , 2010 .

[19]  Paul-Antoine Santoni,et al.  Validation Study of a Two-Dimensional Model of Fire Spread Across a Fuel Bed , 2000 .

[20]  M. Guijarro,et al.  Spot fires: fuel bed flammability and capability of firebrands to ignite fuel beds. , 2009 .

[21]  J. C. Jones,et al.  On The Dynamics of Flaming Combustion in Packed Beds of Forest Materials: Part 3. Effects of Accelerants , 1995 .

[22]  Albert Simeoni,et al.  A MODEL FOR THE SPREAD OF FIRE ACROSS A FUEL BED INCORPORATING THE EFFECTS OF WIND AND SLOPE , 2005 .

[23]  Miltiadis Boboulos,et al.  Wind and slope effects on ROS during the fire propagation in East-Mediterranean pine forest litter , 2009 .

[24]  Thierry Molinier,et al.  Relationship between fireline intensity obtained by calorimetry and flame length. , 2010 .

[25]  Elsa Pastor,et al.  Effect of Wind and Slope When Scaling the Forest Fires Rate of Spread of Laboratory Experiments , 2011 .

[26]  Eva Marino,et al.  Estimation of Peak Heat Release Rate of a Forest Fuel Bed in Outdoor Laboratory Conditions , 2011 .

[27]  T. Davis Sydnor,et al.  The Ease of Ignition of 13 Landscape Mulches , 2003, Arboriculture & Urban Forestry.

[28]  Stephen Quarles.  The Combustibility of Landscape Mulches , 2011 .

[29]  Paul-Antoine Santoni,et al.  Fire Front Width Effects on Fire Spread Across a Laboratory Scale Sloping Fuel Bed , 2001 .

[30]  Samuel L. Manzello,et al.  Ignition of mulch and grasses by firebrands in wildland–urban interface fires , 2006 .