Fire testing of railway seats

Assessment of test methods and criteria

This project is a part of a program called MEKANOR, where Ring Mekanikk AS and Vestfold Bil & Karosseri a.s (VBK as.) are the clients.

In connection with development of new railway seats, there is a desire of fire safe solutions with regard to materials and design. The solutions found should be accepted by the Norwegian State Railways, and also by other European railway companies.

The aim of this project, was to get an overview over existing fire test methods that can be used to assess railway seats. The test methods have to take into account effects that affect fire development in complete chairs. The size and position of the ignition source are factors that have great effect when testing upholstered seatings. A possible fire start in a railway seat, is arson, and this has to be regarded when deciding fire criteria for such chairs.

Fire safe railway seatings must have the following properties:

• Materials difficult to ignite
• Low surface flame spread
• Low heat release
• No ability to develop progressive smouldering fire
• Low smoke production
• Low smoke toxicity

These properties can be documented through fire testing using relatively large ignition sources. The most relevant methods are:

• * British standard BS 5852:1990, ignition source 7
  * NORDTEST method NT FIRE 032 (furniture calorimeter)

An other relevant method is UIC 564-2, Appendix 13 from International Union of Railways, especially in combination with NT FIRE 032.

There is also a possibility to test components in upholstered seatings in small scale, according to ISO 5660-1. The test results can then be assessed by making use of models developed through the EU-project Combustion Behaviour of Upholstered Furniture (CBUF) to assess the fire hazard of the complete chair.

In this SINTEF-project, 7 different material combinations were tested according to BS 5852:1990, section 4, ignition source 7, in combination with NT FIRE 032.

We also performed testing of complete railway chairs, both a new developed one, and chairs that have been in use in Norwegian trains from 15-20 years ago.

The project has given us useful information about fire safe material combinations in railway seatings, and fire safe design of complete chairs.

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