Cone Calorimeter

The name “Cone Calorimeter” was derived from the shape of the truncated conical heater that Dr. Vytenis Babrauskas used to irradiate the test specimen (100mm × 100mm) at fluxes up to 75100kW/m2 in the benchscale oxygen consumption calorimeter that he and his coworkers developed at NIST. The Cone Calorimeter is now the most significant benchscale instrument used in the field of fire testing because it measures important real properties of the material being tested under a variety of preset fire conditions. These measurements can either be used directly by researchers, or they can be used as input data for correlation or mathematical models for predicting fire development.

Directly measured properties include:

• Heat release rate

• Time to ignition

• Mass loss rate

• Smoke release rate

• Effective heat of combustion

• Rates of release of combustion gas (e.g. carbon oxides)