An experimental study on reaction to fire and fire risk of some MDF, HDF and PVC building finishes

Building finishes may have an important contribution to fire growth in buildings. Therefore; it is essential to investigate their fire behaviour. The subject is very wide and manyresearches have been carried out in the world. Especially the use of polymeric materials are matter of concern by buildingregulators and fire safety specialists, because much of them can easily ignite and release a lot of heat and smoke. The uses of these materials have been considerably increased inbuildings in Iran. Hence; it is needed to test and evaluate the fire properties of the polymeric building materials offered inbuilding markets of Iran. In this study, 10 commercially existing finishing products, made of medium and high density fibreboards (MDF and HDF) and PVC were tested in benchscale. The heat and smoke release parameters were evaluated and discussed, including peak and total heat release rates(PRHR and THR), time to ignition (TTI) and total smoke release (TSR). The fire risks of the tested materials were also assessed with use of flashover propensity index (x), which is introduced in next sections